Great kiskadee

Description:

Adult Great Kiskadees are 22 cm (8.7 in) long and weigh 63 g (2.2 oz). The head is black with a strong white eyestripe and a concealed yellow crown stripe. The upperparts are brown, and the wings and tail are brown with usually strong rufous fringes. The black bill is short and thick. The similar Boat-billed Flycatcher (Megarynchus pitangua) has a massive black bill, an olive-brown back and very little rufous in the tail and wings. A few other tyrant flycatchers – some not very closely related – share a similar color pattern, but these species are markedly smaller. The call is an exuberant BEE-tee-WEE, and the bird has an onomatopoeic name in different languages and countries: in Spanish-speaking countries it is often bien-te-veo ("I see you well!").

Habitat:

It breeds in open woodland with some tall trees, including cultivation and around human habitation, from southern Texas and Mexico south to Uruguay and central Argentina, and on Trinidad. It was introduced to Bermuda in 1957, and to Tobago in about 1970. The Great Kiskadee is a common, noisy and conspicuous bird. It is almost omnivorous, and hunts like a shrike or flycatcher, waiting on an open perch high in a tree to sally out to catch insects in flight, or to pounce upon rodents and similar small vertebrates. It will also take prey and some fruit[3] from vegetation by gleaning and jumping for it or ripping it off in mid-hover, and occasionally dives for fish or tadpoles in shallow water, making it one of the few fishing passerines. They like to hunt on their own or in pairs, and though they might be expected to make good use of prey flushed by but too large for the smaller birds of the understory, they do not seem to join mixed-species feeding flocks very often. When they do, they hunt in the familiar manner. Such opportunistic feeding behavior makes it one of the commonest birds in urban areas around Latin America;