General

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: Small flycatcher with olive-brown upperparts, yellow throat and belly, and olive-gray breast. Eye-ring is white and elongated. Wings are dark with two pale bars. Bill is long with dark upper mandible and bright yellow lower mandible. Sexes are similar.

Range and Habitat

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: This species breeds from southern Alaska south along the Pacific Coast to northern Baja California. Breeding extends inland as far as western Alberta. Spends winters south of the U.S.-Mexico border from Baja California along coastal Mexico. Preferred habitats include moist, shaded coniferous or mixed forests.

Breeding and Nesting

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: Three to five white eggs with brown blotches near large end are laid in a moss-lined cup nest made of small twigs and rootlets, usually built against a tree trunk where the bark has split, in roots of a wind-felled tree, in a bank, or under the eave of a forest cabin. Incubation ranges from 14 to 15 days and is carried out by the female.

Foraging and Feeding

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: Hawks flying insects or gleans them from foliage; also eats berries and seeds.

Readily Eats

Meal Worms

Vocalization

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: Song is a rising "pseet-ptsick-seet." First part alone is often used as a call, or is repeated on a drawn-out, almost sibilant high pitch; second part is rapid and louder.

Similar Species

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: Cordilleran Flycatcher is slightly larger, has a different range, and call. Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has a shorter tail, greener back, and a less pointed eyering.