Friday, January 30, 2026

Scale-Crested Pygmy-Tyrant

As in my last post, I was at Tinamu Reserve near Manizales, Colombia with a Spanish speaking guide and his girlfriend, who spoke English. I was also with my wife and oldest granddaughter. I got a belly-photo (looking up into a tree) of a scale-crested pygmy tyrant which was identified by my Colombian guides and confirmed by one identifier on iNaturalist. 



Illustration from Birds of the World. 
I'm not going to go into much of a description: my photos hardly warrant it. It looks like I saw ssp. squamaecrista, found in the Andes of Colombia and western Ecuador. The nominate ssp. has a throat and upper breast that is white with blurry dusky to olive streaks. The rest of the underparts have a light yellow wash with a pale olive wash on the flanks. Squamaecrista has greenish edges on the wing coverts and wider and darker streaks on the throat and breast and paler yellowish flanks than the nominate.
Range from Birds of the World. 

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