Crowned Slaty Flycatcher

About the Crowned Slaty Flycatcher

The crowned slaty flycatcher (Empidonomus aurantioatrocristatus) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in every mainland South American country except Suriname though only as a vagrant to Chile, French Guiana, and Venezuela. There are also single records of it in Panama and the U.S. state of Louisiana.

The crowned slaty flycatcher was formerly described in 1837 as Tyrannus aurantio-atro cristatus by the French naturalists Alcide d'Orbigny and Frédéric de Lafresnaye based on a specimen collected in the Vallegrande Province, Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia. The specific epithet aurantioatrocristatus combines the late Medieval Latin aurantius meaning "orange-coloured" with Latin ater, atri meaning "black" and cristatus meaning "crested". The species was for long placed together with the variegated flycatcher in the genus Empidonomus that had been introduced in 1860 by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis and Ferdinand Heine. In 1984 the American ornithologist Wesley E. Lanyon proposed that the crowned slaty flycatcher should be moved to its own genus Griseotyrannus based on the distinctive syringeal morphology. The two species... Wikipedia →