Yellow-bellied elaenia

The yellow-bellied elaenia (Elaenia flavogaster) is a small bird of the tyrant flycatcher family. It breeds from southern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula through Central and South America as far as northern Argentina, and on Trinidad and Tobago.

Yellow-bellied elaenia
At Registro, São Paulo State, Brazil
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Tyrannidae
Genus:	Elaenia
Species:	E. flavogaster
Binomial name
Elaenia flavogaster (Thunberg, 1822)
Subspecies
4, see text

Description

Anton, Panama

Adults are 16.5 cm (6.5 in) long and weigh 24 g (0.85 oz). They have olive-brown upperparts, a white eye ring, a bushy divided crest and a white crown patch in the parting. The throat is pale and the breast greyish, with pale yellow lower underparts. The call is a nasal breeer, and the song is a wheezing zhu-zhee-zhu-zhee.

Subspecies

Four subspecies are recognized:[2]

• E. f. subpagana – Sclater, PL, 1860: found from southeastern Mexico to Costa Rica and on Coiba Island, Panama
• E. f. pallididorsalis – Aldrich, 1937: found in Panama
• E. f. flavogaster – (Thunberg, 1822): nominate, found in Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, and the southern Lesser Antilles, the Guianas, Brazil except western and central Amazonas, southeastern Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and northeastern Argentina
• E. f. semipagana – Sclater, PL, 1862: found in southwestern Colombia, western and southern Ecuador and northwestern Peru

Habitat

This is a common bird in semi-open woodland, scrub, gardens and cultivation. The yellow-bellied elaenia is a noisy and conspicuous bird which feeds on berries and insects. The latter are usually caught from mid-air after the bird sallies from a perch, and sometimes picked up from plants.[3] The species will also join mixed-species feeding flocks on occasion, typically staying quite some distance up in the trees.[4]

It makes a cup nest and lays two cream eggs with reddish blotches at the larger end. The female incubates for 16 days, with about the same period to fledging. Omnivorous mammals as small as the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) will eagerly plunder yellow-bellied elaenia nests in the undergrowth—perhaps more often during the dry season when fruits are scarce—despite the birds' attempts to defend their offspring.[5]

Status

The yellow-bellied elaenia is a common and wide-ranging bird, not considered threatened by the IUCN.[1]

References

1. BirdLife International (2012). "Elaenia flavogaster". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)old-form url
2. Gill, F.; Donsker, D., eds. (2014). "IOC World Bird List". IOC World Bird List (V 4.2). doi:10.14344/IOC.ML.4.2.
3. de A. Gabriel, Vagner; Pizo, Marco A. (2005). "Foraging behavior of tyrant flycatchers (Aves, Tyrannidae) in Brazil" (PDF). Revista Brasileira de Zoologia (in English and Portuguese). 22 (4): 1072–1077. doi:10.1590/S0101-81752005000400036.
4. Machado, C.G. (1999). "A composição dos bandos mistos de aves na Mata Atlântica da Serra de Paranapiacaba, no sudeste brasileiro" [Mixed flocks of birds in Atlantic Rain Forest in Serra de Paranapiacaba, southeastern Brazil] (PDF). Revista Brasileira de Biologia (in Portuguese and English). 59 (1): 75–85. doi:10.1590/S0034-71081999000100010.
5. de Lyra-Neves, Rachel M.; Oliveira, Maria A.B.; Telino-Júnior, Wallace R.; dos Santos, Ednilza M. (2007). "Comportamentos interespecíficos entre Callithrix jacchus (Linnaeus) (Primates, Callitrichidae) e algumas aves de Mata Atlântica, Pernambuco, Brasil" [Interspecific behaviour between Callithrix jacchus (Linnaeus) (Callitrichidae, Primates) and some birds of the Atlantic forest, Pernanbuco State, Brazil] (PDF). Revista Brasileira de Zoologia (in Portuguese and English). 24 (3): 709–716. doi:10.1590/S0101-81752007000300022.

• Hilty, Steven L. (2003). Birds of Venezuela. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-7136-6418-5.
• ffrench, Richard; O'Neill, John Patton; Eckelberry, Don R. (1991). A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago (2nd ed.). Ithaca, N.Y.: Comstock Publishing. ISBN 0-8014-9792-2.

External links

• BirdLife species factsheet for Elaenia flavogaster
• "Yellow-bellied elaenia media". Internet Bird Collection.
• Yellow-bellied elaenia photo gallery at VIREO (Drexel University)
• Yellow-bellied elaenia Stamps from Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname at bird-stamps.org
• Explore Species: Yellow-bellied elaenia at eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

• Yellow-bellied elaenia species account at Neotropical Birds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
• Interactive range map of Elaenia flavogaster at IUCN Red List maps
• Audio recordings of Yellow-bellied elaenia on Xeno-canto.