Least Flycatcher

About the Least Flycatcher

The Least Flycatcher is the smallest of the eastern Empidonax flycatchers - the infamous little olive-gray birds that make even expert birders sigh. The whole group looks nearly identical: dull upperparts, pale underparts, wing bars, and an eye-ring. Telling them apart is one of birding's classic puzzles.

The Least gives observers more help than most of its kin: a proportionally big head, a bold, crisp white eye-ring on a small round face, short wings, and above all its voice - an emphatic, dry "che-BEK!" snapped out over and over on the breeding grounds and sometimes in migration.

Texas sees this species as a passage migrant, moving through in spring and again in late summer and fall between breeding forests across the northern U.S. and Canada and wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America. Migrants work woodland edges, creek corridors, and brushy parks, sallying out from low perches to snap up insects with an audible click of the bill.

A silent fall Empidonax is often best left identified as "Empidonax species" - which makes a cooperative, well-seen Least Flycatcher like this one a small victory worth photographing.