The smallest flycatcher, Short-tailed Pigmy tyrant is about 3 inches long. It is the smallest passerine bird in the world. The largest flycatcher is Great Shrike Tyrant measuring eleven inches and a half. The Tyrant flycatchers occur through out the American continent and are considered the largest family of birds in the world.
Despite their abundance certain species of flycatchers have met the fate of extinction. The Guam flycatcher became extinct recently in 1940. This happened due to a predator snake, the Brown tree snake. The snake was native to New Guinea, Northern Australia and Eastern Malaysia. The snake found its way along with Lumber shipments to Guam during World War II. Once introduced into Guam, the snake multiplied, as it had no predators. The snake preyed upon the flycatchers and soon the bird was totally wiped out.
Tyrant flycatchers sing loud. They repeat the same song often. They have a schedule singing either at dawn or dusk or both. The songs are mostly for establishing and defending their territories.
The Royal flycatcher of Central America has a large red fanlike crest on its head. The bird erects this crest and moves sideways when alarmed by predators.
Flycatchers nesting in cooler climates spend more time incubating the eggs than those that lay eggs in warmer climates. In one experiment, ornithologists maintained Pied flycatchers in nest boxes. When the nest boxes were heated, the birds spent less time incubating the eggs and spent more time on their feeding.
Flycatchers usually lay 3 to 4 eggs in their nest. The young ones are eating machines involving their parents in a never- ending quest for food. The Pied flycatcher feeds its young thirty times an hour. The feeding activity goes on almost twenty hours per day.
The parent flycatchers tempt the young to get out of the nest by dangling the food outside the chick’s reach. The chicks have to leave the nest in order to receive their treat. The Japanese Paradise flycatcher has been observed feeding two chicks that had left the nest, while totally ignoring the hungry pleas of the third chick that was confined to the nest.
Accumulation of droppings of chicks results in foul smelling. The young ones in an effort to clean the nest hold the excrement in their bills and pass it on through holes in the nest to their parents. The parent birds throw the droppings away form the nest. The cleaning of the nest is essential, as the nest space becomes too small with the nestlings increasing in their size feeding and defecating continuously.
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