Pitangus

The great kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus) is a passerine bird in the tyrant flycatcher family Tyrannidae. It is the only member of the genus Pitangus. It breeds in open woodland with some tall trees, including cultivation and around human habitation, mainly found in Belize, and from the Lower Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas and northern Mexico south to Argentina and Uruguay, but also it occurs all over Venezuela and Brazil (especially the central and south-southeastern regions), Paraguay and central Argentina, the Guyana coastline, and on Trinidad. It was introduced to Bermuda in 1957, and to Tobago in about 1970. The great kiskadee was described and illustrated in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. He used the name Pitangua-guacu, 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 La Pie-Griesche jaune de Cayenne and the Latin name Lanius Cayanensis Luteus. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. At one time, the bird was also known as the Derby Flycatcher. 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. One of these was the great kiskadee. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Lanius sulphuratus and cited Brisson's work. 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 genus Pitangus was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1827. The great kiskadee is now the only member of the genus. The lesser kiskadee was at one time also placed in Pitangus but in 1984 the American ornithologist Wesley Edwin Lanyon moved the lesser kiskadee to its own monotypic genus Philohydor. This has been accepted by some ornithologists, but not all. There are 10 subspecies: The adult great kiskadee is one of the largest of the tyrant flycatchers. It is 25 to 28 cm (9.8 to 11.0 in) in length and weighs 53 to 71.5 g (1.87 to 2.52 oz). 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.