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Summary

The golden-crowned flycatcher (Myiodynastes chrysocephalus) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru.

Taxonomy and systematics

The golden-crowned flycatcher has a complicated taxonomic history. It was originally described as Scaphorhychus chrysocephalus. By the early 1900s it had been reassigned to genus Myiodynastes, which had been erected in 1847. A 1927 publication assigned it five subspecies. One of them (M. c. intermedius) was soon folded into M. c. cinerascens. By at least 1979 M. c. hemichrysus had been separated to form a new species, the golden-bellied flycatcher. A 2016 publication detailed the vocal differences and similarities between the three remaining subspecies of the golden-crowned flycatcher and the golden-bellied flycatcher. Based on that study, by 2020 BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World moved two subspecies from the golden-crowned to the golden-bellied. The Clements taxonomy followed suit in 2022 and the IOC and both subcommittees of the American Ornithological Society in 2023. The golden-bellied and golden-crowned flycatchers are sister species.

These changes left the golden-crowned flycatcher a monotypic species.

Description

The golden-crowned flycatcher is 18.5 to 22 cm (7.3 to 8.7 in) long and weighs about 37 to 40 g (1.3 to 1.4 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a brownish gray to dusky crown with a usually hidden golden-yellow patch in the center. They have a long white supercilium on an otherwise mostly grayish dusky face. Their upperparts are mostly dull olive with a greenish olive rump and uppertail coverts; the last have cinnamon or buffy edges at their tips. Their wings are dusky with thin rufous to tawny-buff edges on the coverts and flight feathers. Their tail is mostly dusky with some rufous edgers on the feathers. Their chin is white, their throat pale buffy, their breast buffy yellow, and the rest of their underparts...