Pied water tyrant
The pied water tyrant is a small passerine bird in the tyrant flycatcher family. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad, and Venezuela, as a vagrant to Ecuador and possibly other areas as well.
Taxonomy and systematics
The pied water tyrant was formally described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Muscicapa pica in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The pied water tyrant is now placed in the genus Fluvicola that was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1827. The genus name is derived from a combination of Latin fluvius meaning "river" and -cola meaning "dweller". The specific epithet pica is Latin for "magpie".The pied water tyrant is monotypic. However, what is now the black-backed water tyrant was previously treated as a subspecies of it.
Description
The pied water tyrant is long and weighs. Both sexes have prominent rictal bristles. Adult males are mostly white. They have a black hindcrown and nape, a mottled black and white back, black wings with small white tips on the tertials, and a black tail with small white tips. They have entirely white underparts. Females have brownish mixed with the black on the hindcrown, nape, and back. Both sexes have a dark iris, a sharply hooked black bill, and black legs and feet. Juveniles have the same pattern as adults but are brown where adults are black.Distribution and habitat
The pied water tyrant has a disjunct distribution which has not been fully defined. Sources agree that it is found in eastern Panama, from northern and central Colombia into northwestern Venezuela, on Trinidad, and from eastern Colombia across northern Venezuela, the Guianas, and to the mouth of the Amazon in extreme northern Brazil. They differ regarding records outside those areas. The IOC, the Clements taxonomy, and the North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society do not list any other countries. BirdLife International adds Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Ecuador, and Peru as locations where the species is a resident. The IUCN, which generally uses BLI range data, lists it as resident in Ecuador and Peru and as a vagrant in Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Curaçao. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World cites refereed papers, other published works, and eBird data to note its minor presence in Ecuador and Peru. The South American Classification Committee of the AOS lists it as confirmed in Peru and present as a vagrant in Ecuador. Neither mention the other Caribbean islands.The pied water tyrant primarily inhabits freshwater marshes and the margins of lakes and ponds; it also occurs in nearby grasslands and gardens. In elevation it occurs mostly below but reaches in Colombia.