Cinereous Tyrant

About the Cinereous Tyrant

The cinereous tyrant, or cinereous black-tyrant, (Knipolegus striaticeps) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, and as a vagrant to Brazil.

The cinereous tyrant was formally described in 1837 as Muscisaxicola striaticeps. During the first two thirds of the twentieth century it was placed in the monotypic genus Entotriccus but by the 1980s it was placed in its current genus Knipolegus.

The cinereous tyrant is monotypic. The cinereous tyrant is 13 to 13.5 cm (5.1 to 5.3 in) long. Adult males are shades of gray. ("Cinereous" means ash-colored.) They have mostly dark gray upperparts. Their head is darker than their body, giving the appearance of a hood, though the face is blackish gray. Their wings are dusky gray or blackish gray with grayish edges on the inner remiges and thin pale gray tips on the coverts that show as two wing bars. Their tail is dusky with pale outer webs on the outer feathers. Their throat and breast are a duskier gray than their back and their belly is grayish white or whitish with thin dusky streaks. Adult females have a mostly olive-brown... Wikipedia →