Adult. Photo: Andrew Cannizzaro/Flickr (CC BY-2.0)
Contopus virens
| Conservation status | Still widespread and fairly common, but surveys show a slight decline in recent decades. Reasons for decline are not well known. |
|---|---|
| Family | Tyrant Flycatchers |
| Habitat | Woodlands, groves. Breeds in forest (mainly deciduous, sometimes mixed, and seldom coniferous forest). Favors margins of clearings, such as around meadows, roadsides, ponds, or small openings in the forest. Winters at forest edges and in scrubby woods in tropics. |
Does most foraging by watching from an exposed perch within a tree, then flying out to catch an insect in the air. Also takes insects from foliage or twigs while hovering, and may descend to pick insects from grass or other plants close to the ground.
3, sometimes 2, rarely 4. Whitish, with brown and lavender blotches often concentrated toward larger end. Incubation is by female, 12-13 days. Young: Both parents feed young. Age of young at first flight about 14-18 days.
Both parents feed young. Age of young at first flight about 14-18 days.
Mostly insects. Feeds almost entirely on insects and other arthropods, taking only small numbers of berries. Diet in summer includes various kinds of flies, also wasps, bees, winged ants, beetles, moths, true bugs, and grasshoppers; also some spiders and millipedes.
Male sings in spring, especially at dawn and dusk, to defend nesting territory. Courtship behavior is not well known, may involve male actively chasing female through treetops. Nest site is in tree (usually deciduous), saddled on a horizontal branch well out from the trunk. Usually 15-45' above ground, can be lower or much higher. Nest (probably built by female alone) is compact open cup of grass, plant fibers, and spiderwebs, the outside usually decorated with lichens. Nest seems small for size of bird. From the side or below, nest may look like a bump or knot on the branch.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
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