Return of Bird of the Week: Long-tailed Tyrant

There are a staggering, bewildering number of birds in the Neotropics that eat bugs. Hundreds of species of flycatchers, alone. One of the more spectacular is the Long-tailed Tyrant. Long-tailed Tyrants feed exclusively on flying insects, especially stingless bees.  Insects are captured by making quick aerial sallies from a high exposed snag or branch. Not coincidentally, that perching makes them easy to photograph. The species has an extensive range, from Honduras to Brazil, The species is described as “fairly common but patchily distributed,” but the total population is unknown and the species is, in the phrasing of ornithology, “poorly understood.” Despite that long tail,…