Art by Barry Kent MacKay
An All-Creatures.org
Art and Photo Presentation

(Artwork - 073)
Scale-crested Pygmy-Tyrant
(Lophotriccus pileatus luteiventris)

This bird is tiny…7 or 8 grams, and I painted this image approximately life-size. Therefore, the image on your screen is larger than the painting, showing all the brushstrokes and irregularities that are less apparent in the original vignette painting, and still less when it is reproduced at a small size, which is the intent.

These kinglet-sized birds are widely found in Central America, and in parts of northern and western South America, although entirely absent from the region east of the Andes, although they do occur on the eastern slopes, often found in bamboo forests. So far as is known their diet is entirely invertebrates, mostly insects and spiders, although we don’t know enough about them to say they never eat small berries or the odd small seed, as do other members of the family, Tyrannidae, to which they belong.

They often fly up to snatch tiny insects and spiders from the undersides of leaves. They have a crest which, like that of the Royal Flycatcher, is “lateral”, going from side to side, but it is not nearly as extensive as the crest of the much larger Royal Flycatcher. It can also fold the crest, as I showed in the illustration, with a side view of the head. They are non-migratory and common through much of their range. This is a gouache watercolour on paper.

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