Caribbean elaenia
The Caribbean elaenia is a species of bird in subfamily Elaeniinae of family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in the West Indies, in parts of Central America, and on islands just off the northern South American coast.
Taxonomy and systematics
In 1760, the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the Caribbean elaenia in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on the island of Martinique. He used the French name Le gobe-mouche hupé de la Martinique and the Latin Muscicapa Martinicana cristata. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson including the Caribbean elaenia. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Muscicapa martinica and cited Brisson's work. This species is now placed in the genus Elaenia that was introduced by the Swedish zoologist Carl Jakob Sundevall in 1836.The Caribbean elaenia has these seven subspecies:E. m. riisii Sclater, 1860E. m. martinica E. m. barbadensis Cory, 1888E. m. remota Berlepsch, 1907E. m. chinchorrensis Griscom, 1926E. m. cinerescens Ridgway, 1884E. m. caymanensis Berlepsch, 1907
The Clements taxonomy groups E. m. riisii, E. m. martinica, and E. m. barbadensis as the Caribbean elaenia and the other four subspecies as the Caribbean elaenia. Some authors have suggested that the groups represent separate species.
Description
The Caribbean elaenia is long and weighs. It is largish elaenia and has a bushy crest. The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies E. m. martinica have a dull olive to brownish olive crown with a white stripe in the middle of the crest. They have whitish lores and a faint whitish eyering on an otherwise mottled gray-brown face. Their upperparts are dull olive to brownish olive. Their wings are dusky with yellowish to whitish edges on the flight feathers and tips on the coverts; the latter show as two wing bars. Their tail is dusky. Their throat is sooty gray, their breast pale gray, their belly whitish to dull yellowish, and their undertail coverts yellowish to whitish.The other subspecies of the Caribbean elaenia differ from the nominate and each other thus:E. m. riisii: smaller and overall paler than nominateE. m. barbadensis: larger than nominate with darker underpartsE. m. remota: smaller than nominate with a browner rump and grayer throat and breastE. m. chinchorrensis: dark brownish upperparts than nominate with no yellow on the bellyE. m. cinerescens: larger than nominate with a stronger yellow wash on the bellyE. m. caymanensis: between riisii and nominate in size and overall paler than nominate
Both sexes of all subspecies have a dark brown iris, a black bill with a dusky pinkish base to the mandible, and black legs and feet.
Distribution and habitat
The subspecies of the Caribbean elaenia are found thus:E. m. riisii: Puerto Rico and its offshore islands, the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, St. Martin, St. Bartholomew, Antigua, Barbuda, and Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles E. m. martinica: Lesser Antilles from Saba and St. Eustatius south to GrenadaE. m. barbadensis: BarbadosE. m. remota: Culebra Cay and Cozumel, Holbox, Meco, and Mujeres islands of Quintana Roo, southeastern Mexico E. m. chinchorrensis: on Great Cay Island off Quintana Roo, on Half Moon Caye, Middle Caye, Glover's Reef, Caye Caulker, and Ambergris Caye off Belize, and as a vagrant on the Belizean mainland E. m. cinerescens: San Andrés, Providéncia, and Santa Catalina islands off Nicaragua E. m. caymanensis: Cayman IslandsA vagrant photographed and audio recorded in northwestern Florida, though not definitively, is possibly an individual of E. m. riisii. It is listed by the Florida Ornithological Society as "Elaenia species".
The Clements taxonomy states that the population on the Belizean cayes may belong to E. m. remota.
The San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina is a department of Colombia but is east of Nicaragua and closer to that country than to mainland Colombia. The Clements taxonomy assigns the population there to E. m. cinerescens but places the archipelago "east of Honduras". Another taxonomic system does not name the archipelago but places E. m. cinerescens on "islands off Honduras". A third system places the archipelago's population in the "Caribbean" group without naming a subspecies.
The Caribbean elaenia inhabits most of the lowland landscapes within its range. It is found in the canopy and on the edges of humid evergreen forest, in deciduous woodland, scrublands, parks and gardens, open land with a scattering of trees and shrubs, and coastally in mangroves. It also occurs in the mountains of the southern Lesser Antilles. In elevation it ranges from sea level to about.