Gray Flycatcher

Gray Flycatcher

About the photographs

About the map

Play sound from this species

Menu

1. Cool Facts
2. Description
3. Similar Species
4. Sound
5. Range
6. Habitat
7. Food
8. Behavior
9. Conservation Status
10. Other Names

A typical species of the Great Basin sagebrush, the Gray Flycatcher can be quickly recognized not by its drab plumage, but by its habit of slowly wagging its tail downwards.

Cool Facts

• The similarity of Gray and Dusky flycatchers has caused confusion for a long time. In fact, the specimen designated as the "type" for Dusky Flycatcher was actually a Gray Flycatcher.

• The Gray Flycatcher was not recognized as breeding in the United States until the early 20th century. Before that time it was thought to breed in northern Mexico and to wander northward in the fall.

Description

• Size: 14-15 cm (6-6 in)
• Wingspan: 22 cm (9 in)
• Weight: 11-14 g (0.39-0.49 ounces)

• Small flycatcher.
• Prominent eyering and wingbars.
• Back gray, belly white.
• Constantly wags tail slowly downward.

• Back gray with no more than a hint of greenish.
• Belly and undertail coverts whitish.
• White eyering, sometimes thicker behind eye.
• Pale band across forehead.
• Upper mandible blackish; lower mandible mostly yellowish or pink with a dark tip.
• Bill rather long and narrow.
• White outer edges to slightly notched tail.

Sex Differences

Sexes alike.

Immature

Similar to adult, but upperparts tinged brownish, underparts with buff wash, and wingbars buff.

Similar Species

• Closely resembles Dusky and Hammond's flycatchers. Habitat, song, and sometimes range are the best ways to distinguish among these species. Gray Flycatcher's downward tail wagging is distinctive; other Empidonax flycatchers flick their tail upward.
• Gray and Hutton's vireos also are small, drab, birds with white wingbars, but the vireos have a more horizontal perching posture and narrow, hooked bills.

Sound

Song a rough, two-noted "chlup, chlup." Call an upwardly inflected "prit."

Range

Range Map

© 2004 Cornell Lab of Ornithology

About the map

Summer Range

Breeds from very southern British Columbia and southwestern Wyoming, southward to eastern California and New Mexico.

Winter Range

Winters in very southern Arizona and Mexico.

Habitat

Sagebrush, pinyon pine and juniper, or open ponderosa pine forests.

Food

Flying insects.

Behavior

Foraging

Takes insects on the wing or from the ground; perches on dead branches and twigs between forays.

Conservation Status

Relatively common and possibly increasing.

Other Names

Moucherolle gris (French)
Mosquero gris (Spanish)

Sources used to construct this page:

Sterling, J. C. 1999. Gray Flycatcher (Empidonax wrightii). In The Birds of North America, No. 458 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.