Sulphur-Bellied Flycatcher

Myiodynastes luteiventris

Rarely seen in the US, the Sulphur-Bellied Flycatcher is a summer resident in tropical lowlands. They prefer evergreen forest edges of Mexico and northern Central America. But they are regular summer visitor to the sky island canyons and the broad-leaf forests in southeastern Arizona.

When the breeding season is over, these birds migrate to South America. There, they stay on the eastern slopes of the Andes range in river-edge forests. But they also use disturbed and secondary forests at the edges and in the canopies of mature tropical forests of the upper Amazon basin.

Most references I found confess that this species is “under-studied”. Taxonomists regard the Sulphur-Bellied Flycatcher as monotypic (i.e. there are no subspecies).

Until recently, my experience with these birds was limited to a few meetings on the Fort Huachuca military base in Garden Canyon in Arizona. In 2023, I enjoyed meeting these birds near Portal Arizona along Cave Creek. A few days later, I revisited Fort Huachuca and found more of them in Huachuca Canyon.