General
Olive-sided Flycatcher: Large, heavy-billed flycatcher with dark olive-brown upperparts, streaked olive-brown sides, and white underparts. Head has slight crest and faint white eye-ring. Wings are dark with two pale bars. Dark tail is relatively short, broad, and slightly notched. Sexes are similar. Juvenile has pale yellow underparts.
Range and Habitat
Olive-sided Flycatcher: Breeds in Alaska, east across Canada to northern New England, and south to the mountains of California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Spends winters in the tropics. Preferred habitats include boreal spruce and fir forests, usually near openings, burns, ponds, and bogs.
Breeding and Nesting
Olive-sided Flycatcher: Three to four brown and gray spotted, white to pink eggs are laid in a twig nest lined with lichens, mosses, and grass, and built near the end of a branch among the foliage well up in an evergreen tree. Incubation ranges from 14 to 17 days and is carried out by the female.
Foraging and Feeding
Olive-sided Flycatcher: Diet consists mostly of flying insects, including bees, wasps, flying ants, moths, grasshoppers, and dragonflies; catches food in mid-air.
Readily Eats
Meal Worms
Vocalization
Olive-sided Flycatcher: Song is a distinctive and emphatic "quick-three-beers." Call is a loud "pip-pip-pip."
Similar Species
Olive-sided Flycatcher: Greater Pewee has longer tail, tufted crest, and more uniform gray plumage. Eastern Wood-Pewee is smaller and has white to olive-gray underparts.