The cliff flycatcher (Hirundinea ferruginea) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is known in every mainland South American country except Chile and may occur there as well.
Taxonomy and systematics
The cliff flycatcher was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the todies in the genus Todus and coined the binomial name Todus ferrugineus. Gmelin based his description on the "ferruginous bellied tody" from Cayenne that had been described in 1782 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham had access to a specimen in the Leverian Museum in London. The cliff flycatcher is the only species in the genus Hirundinea that was introduced in 1837 by the French naturalists Alcide d'Orbigny and Frédéric de Lafresnaye The genus name Hirundinea is Latin meaning "of swallows"; the specific epithet ferruginea is Latin meaning "rusty-colored" or "ferruginous".
The cliff flycatcher's further taxonomy is unsettled. The International Ornithological Congress, the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society (SACC), and the Clements taxonomy assign it these four subspecies:
H. f. ferruginea (Gmelin, JF, 1788)
H. f. sclateri Reinhardt, 1870
H. f. bellicosa (Vieillot, 1819)
H. f. pallidior Hartert, EJO & Goodson, 1917
However, since 2016 BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) assigns only H. f. ferruginea and H. f. sclateri to the cliff flycatcher and separates H. f. bellicosa and H. f. pallidior as the "swallow flycatcher" (H. bellicosa). The Clements taxonomy recognizes the "cliff" and "swallow" groups within the single species.
This article follows the one species, four subspecies, model.
Description
The cliff flycatcher is 15.5 to 18.5 cm (6.1 to 7.3 in) long and weighs 21 to 42 g (0.74 to 1.5 oz)....
