Cinnamon Attila

About the Cinnamon Attila

The cinnamon attila (Attila cinnamomeus) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The cinnamon attila was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the Old World flycatchers in the genus Muscicapa and coined the binomial name Muscicapa cinnamomea. Gmelin based his description on the "cinnamon flycatcher" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham had access to a specimen from Cayenne in the Leverian Museum in London. The cinnamon attila is now one of seven flycatchers in the genus Attila that was introduced in 1831 by the French naturalist René Lesson.

From early in the twentieth century until the 1970s many authors classified genus Attila in family Cotingidae; after that it was recognized as belonging to family Tyrannidae. In the early twentieth century the cinnamon attila and the ochraceous attila (A. torridus) were treated... Wikipedia →