The cinereous tyrant, or cinereous black-tyrantHBW and BirdLife International (2024). Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 9. Available at: https://datazone.birdlife.org/about-our-science/taxonomy retrieved December 23, 2024, (''Knipolegus striaticeps'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the family

Tyrannidae The tyrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae) comprise a Family (biology), family of passerine birds which is found virtually throughout North America, North and South America. It is the world's largest family of birds, with more than 400 species, and is ...

, the tyrant flycatchers. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, and as a

vagrant Vagrancy is the condition of wandering homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants usually live in poverty and support themselves by travelling while engaging in begging, scavenging, or petty theft. In Western countries, ...

to Brazil.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, G. Del-Rio, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 30 March 2025. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved 30 March 2025

Taxonomy and systematics

The cinereous tyrant was

formally described A species description is a formal scientific description of a newly encountered species, typically articulated through a scientific publication. Its purpose is to provide a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differ ...

in 1837 as ''Muscisaxicola striaticeps''. During the first two thirds of the twentieth century it was placed in the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

genus ''Entotriccus'' but by the 1980s it was placed in its current genus ''

Knipolegus ''Knipolegus'' is a genus of birds, the black tyrants, in the tyrant flycatcher family Tyrannidae. The genus was erected by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1826 with the blue-billed black tyrant as the type species. The genus name combine ...

''.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, G. Del-Rio, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 30 March 2025. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved 30 March 2025 The cinereous tyrant is monotypic.

Description

The cinereous tyrant is long. Adult males are shades of gray. ("

Cinereous Cinereous is a colour, meaning ashy grey in appearance, either consisting of or resembling ashes, or a grey colour tinged with coppery brown. It is derived from the Latin , from (wood ashes). The first recorded use of ''cinereous'' as a col ...

" means ash-colored.) They have mostly dark gray upperparts. Their head is darker than their body, giving the appearance of a hood, though the face is blackish gray. Their wings are dusky gray or blackish gray with grayish edges on the inner

remiges Flight feathers (''Pennae volatus'') are the long, stiff, asymmetrically shaped, but symmetrically paired pennaceous feathers on the wings or tail of a bird; those on the wings are called remiges (), singular remex (), while those on the ta ...

and thin pale gray tips on the

coverts A covert feather or tectrix on a bird is one of a set of feathers, called coverts (or ''tectrices''), which cover other feathers. The coverts help to smooth airflow over the wings and tail. Ear coverts The ear coverts are small feathers behind t ...

that show as two

wing bar The following is a glossary of common English language terms used in the description of birds—warm-blooded vertebrates of the class Aves and the only living dinosaurs. Birds, who have and the ability to (except for the approximately 60 ext ...

s. Their tail is dusky with pale outer webs on the outer feathers. Their throat and breast are a duskier gray than their back and their belly is grayish white or whitish with thin dusky streaks. Adult females have a mostly olive-brown head and upperparts with a rufous crown, whitish lores, dusky streaks on the nape, and rufous uppertail coverts. Their wings are olive-brown with white tips on the coverts that show as two

s. Their tail is olive-brown with rufous inner webs to the feathers. Their throat and breast are buff with thin gray streaks on the breast. Their belly is whitish. Males have a bright scarlet iris and females a pale brown iris. Both sexes have a black bill and black legs and feet.Farnsworth, A. and G. Langham (2020). Cinereous Tyrant (''Knipolegus striaticeps''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.cintyr1.01 retrieved May 4, 2025

Distribution and habitat

The cinereous tyrant is found from eastern Bolivia's

Santa Cruz Department Santa Cruz () is the largest of the nine constituent departments of Bolivia, occupying about one-third (33.74%) of the country's territory. With an area of , it is slightly smaller than Japan or the US state of Montana. It is located in the ...

south through western Paraguay into northwestern Argentina as far as western

Córdoba Córdoba most commonly refers to: * Córdoba, Spain, a major city in southern Spain and formerly the imperial capital of Islamic Spain * Córdoba, Argentina, the second largest city in Argentina and the capital of Córdoba Province Córdoba or Cord ...

and northern San Luis provinces. It has also occurred as a vagrant in extreme western

Mato Grosso do Sul Mato Grosso do Sul ( ) is one of Federative units of Brazil, Brazil's 27 federal units, located in the southern part of the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West Region, bordering five Brazilian states: Mato Grosso (to the north), Goiás and ...

in southwestern Brazil. It inhabits the edges and openings of woodlands in the

Gran Chaco The Gran Chaco or simply Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland tropical dry broadleaf forest natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion o ...

. In elevation it mostly occurs below but locally reaches .

Behavior

Movement

The cinereous tyrant is apparently partially migratory, with some southern birds migrating north for the austral winter.

Feeding

The cinereous tyrant feeds on insects. It mostly forages singly and occasionally in pairs. It sits erect on an exposed perch and captures prey in mid-air with sallies from it (" hawking").

Breeding

The cinereous tyrant's breeding season has not been fully defined but includes at least November to February in Argentina. Males make a display flight from a perch up to about above the ground and drops with folded wings to a different perch. The species' nest is an open cup made from grass, horsehair, and feathers; some have been placed in a cactus. The clutch is two eggs. The incubation period, time to fledging, and details of parental care are not known.

Vocalization

The cinereous tyrant is mostly silent. Males give a "''ts-ip''" call before the display flight and during the drop makes a "''skidi-ik'': noise that might actually be from its wings. The latter is also written as "''tikitip''".

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

has assessed the cinereous tyrant as being of Least Concern. It has a large range; its population size is not known and is believed to be stable. No immediate threats have been identified. It is considered fairly common to locally common. "Chaco woodland is increasingly being cleared for cattle grazing and agriculture, putting this species at some risk."

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q944623 cinereous tyrant Birds of the Gran Chaco cinereous tyrant Taxonomy articles created by Polbot