Brown-crested Flycatcher

About the Brown-crested Flycatcher

The Brown-crested Flycatcher is the biggest and burliest of the Myiarchus flycatchers in Texas - brownish gray above with a bushy crest, pale gray throat and chest, lemon-yellow belly, and rufous flashes in the wings and tail. The heavy, thick-based black bill is the best mark for separating it from the very similar Ash-throated Flycatcher, along with voice.

And voice is usually how you find one: a loud, sharp "whit!" and a rolling, emphatic "come HERE, come HERE" delivered from the canopy, often before sunrise. Like all Myiarchus flycatchers it nests in cavities - old woodpecker holes, natural hollows, and nest boxes - and famously lines the nest with shed snakeskin. It hunts with abrupt sallies from a perch, snapping up cicadas, beetles, and other big insects.

In Texas the Brown-crested Flycatcher is a common summer bird of the Rio Grande Valley and the South Texas brush country, thinning out northward onto the southern Edwards Plateau. In the Austin area it is a genuine rarity - a few turn up in some summers, and each one draws local birders. The bird photographed here spent part of June 2025 at a community garden in Travis County, a notable record for the county.