Jelski's Chat Tyrant

About the Jelski's Chat Tyrant

Jelski's chat-tyrant (Silvicultrix jelskii) is a species of passerine bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in Ecuador and Peru. Jelski's chat-tyrant has a complicated taxonomic history. It was formally described in 1883 as Ochthoeca jelskii. What is now Kalinowski's chat-tyrant (Silvicultrix spondionata) was described in 1896 as a subspecies of Jelski's. Both taxa were later treated as subspecies of the crowned chat-tyrant (then Tyrannula frontalis). In 1966 Meyer de Schauensee placed the crowned chat-tyrant in genus Ochthoeca, returning Jelski's and Kalinowski's chat-tyrants to their original genus, though still as subspecies of the crowned chat-tyrant. Wesley Lanyon moved the crowned chat-tyrant to Silvicultrix when he erected that genus in 1986.

By 1990 some authors had elevated Kalinowski's and Jelski's chat-tyrants to full species. By 2006 the IOC had recognized Jelski's chat-tyrant as a species and then adopted the change in genus to Silvicultrix in 2009. The first version of BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW), published in 2007, included Jelski's chat-tyrant as a full species. The Clements... Wikipedia →