Western Wood Pewee

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Western Wood-Pewee

Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Tyrannidae
Genus: Contopus
Species: C. sordidulus
Binomial name
Contopus sordidulus
(Sclater, 1859)

The Western Wood-Pewee, Contopus sordidulus, is a small tyrant flycatcher.

Adults are gray-olive on the upperparts with light underparts, washed with olive on the breast. They have two wing bars and a dark bill with yellow at the base of the lower mandible. This bird is very similar in appearance to the Eastern Wood-Pewee; the two birds were formerly considered to be one species.

Their breeding habitat is open wooded areas in western North America. The female lays 2 or 3 eggs in an open cup nest on a horizontal tree branch. Both parents feed the young.

These birds migrate to South America at the end of summer.

They wait on a perch at a middle height in a tree and fly out to catch insects in flight (hawking), sometimes hovering to pick insects from vegetation (gleaning).

The call is a loud buzzy peeer. The song consists of three rapid descending tsees ending with a descending peeer.

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