Great kiskadee

The great kiskadee was described and illustrated in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. He used the name , the word for a large flycatcher in the Tupi language. In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the species in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. He used the French name and the Latin name . Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition in 1766 he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson in his Ornithologie. The specific name sulphuratus is Latin for 'sulphur'. The word had been used by Brisson in describing the yellow colour of the underparts of the bird. The lesser kiskadee was at one time also placed in Pitangus but in 1984 the American ornithologist Wesley E. Lanyon moved the lesser kiskadee to its own monotypic genus Philohydor. This has been accepted by some ornithologists, but not all. The bird was formerly also known as the Derby flycatcher. Ten subspecies are recognised: • P. s. texanus van Rossem, 1940 – south Texas to east Mexico • P. s. derbianus (Kaup, 1852) – west Mexico • P. s. guatimalensis (Lafresnaye, 1852) – southeast Mexico to central Panama • P. s. rufipennis (Lafresnaye, 1851) – north Colombia and north Venezuela • P. s. caucensis Chapman, 1914 – west and south Colombia • P. s. trinitatis Hellmayr, 1906 – east Colombia, south and east Venezuela and northwest Brazil, Trinidad • P. s. sulphuratus (Linnaeus, 1766) – the Guianas and north, west, central Amazonian Brazil, southeast Colombia, and east Ecuador to southeast Peru • P. s. maximiliani (Cabanis & Heine, 1859) – north, east Bolivia and west, central Paraguay to east and south Brazil • P. s. bolivianus (Lafresnaye, 1852) – central Bolivia • P. s. argentinus Todd, 1952 – east Paraguay, southeast Brazil, and Uruguay to central Argentina ==Description==

The adult great kiskadee is one of the largest of the tyrant flycatchers. It is in length and weighs . The head is black with a strong white supercilium and a concealed yellow crown stripe. The upperparts are brown, and the wings and tail are brown with usually strong rufous fringes. The bill is short, thick, and black in color. The similar boat-billed flycatcher (Megarynchus pitangua) has a more massive black bill, an olive-brown back, and very little rufous in the tail and wings. A few other tyrant flycatchers – the social flycatcher (Myiozetetes similis), for example – share a similar color pattern, but these species are markedly smaller. The call is an exuberant BEE-tee-WEE, and the bird has an onomatopoeic name in different languages and countries: In Brazil its popular name is bem-te-vi ("I saw you well") and in Spanish-speaking countries it is often bien-te-veo ("I see you well") and sometimes shortened to benteveo. In Venezuela it is called "cristofué" or "Christ did it". ==Distribution and habitat==

The great kiskadee occupies a wide range of habitats, from open grassland with scattered trees to urban areas. Its range extends from the Lower Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas south through Central America to southern Argentina. It does not regularly occur in Chile. The birds bred successfully and by 1976 the population on the island had expanded to around 60,000. The great kiskadee is omnivorous and has failed to control the number of lizards. ==Behaviour and ecology==

The great kiskadee is a common, noisy, and conspicuous bird. It is omnivorous and hunts like a shrike or flycatcher, waiting on an open perch high in a tree to sally out and catch insects in flight or to pounce upon rodents and similar small vertebrates (such as other birds' chicks and bats). It will also take prey (such as small snakes, lizards, frogs, perched insects, spiders, millipedes and land snails) and some seeds and fruit from vegetation by gleaning and jumping for it or ripping it off in mid-hover, and occasionally dives for freshwater snails, fish or tadpoles in shallow water, making it one of the few fishing passerines. It also visits feeding stations to eat bread, dog food, bananas and peanut butter/seed mixture. Kiskadees like to hunt on their own or in pairs, and though they might be expected to make good use of prey flushed by but too large for the smaller birds of the understory, they do not seem to join mixed-species feeding flocks very often. When they do, they hunt in the familiar manner. Such opportunistic feeding behavior makes it one of the most common birds in urban areas around Latin America; its flashy belly and its shrill call make it one of the most conspicuous. Breeding Great kiskadees are monogamous and defend a territory. Both sexes build a large domed nest that has a side entrance. It is chiefly composed of grasses and small twigs but can also incorporate lichen, string, and plastic. The birds will steal material from other nests. The clutch is 3 to 4 eggs. Only the female incubates the eggs; the male guards the nest while she leaves the nest to feed. One of two birds studied in the Parque Nacional de La Macarena of Colombia was parasitized by microfilariae. ==Status==

Not being appreciated for its song, the great kiskadee is not usually kept caged and therefore has escaped the depredations of poaching for the pet trade. Also, its feeding mostly on live prey makes it extremely difficult to keep in captivity. It is not considered threatened by the IUCN. ==Gallery==

Great_Kiskadee_on_Branch.png|Perched in Tulum, MX. Great kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus maximiliani).jpg|P. s. maximilianiBrazil Pitangus sulphuratus 3.jpg|Possibly from Trinidad and Tobago File:Benteveo.jpg|Montevideo, Uruguay File:Great Kiskadee South Texas July 2011.jpg|Beeville, Texas File:Great kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), Costa Rica.jpg|Pitangus sulphuratus guatimalensis, Costa Rica File:Great Kisakadee Pitangus sulphuratus eggs.JPG|Eggs from a nest near El Copey de Dota, Costa Rica File:Great Kisakadee Pitangus sulphuratus nest.JPG|Nest near El Copey de Dota, Costa Rica File:Great Kiskadee E.S.jpg|Great kiskadee seen in La Libertad, El Salvador ==Footnotes==