General

Acadian Flycatcher: Small flycatcher with olive-gray upperparts, pale gray throat, distinctive pale yellow eye-ring, white lower breast, and faint yellow wash on belly and undertail coverts. Wings are olive-gray with two buff wing bars. Bill is long and broad-based with yellow-orange lower mandible. Sexes are similar. Juvenile is similar but with olive-brown upperparts.

Range and Habitat

Acadian Flycatcher: Breeds from southern Minnesota east through southern New England, south to the Gulf Coast and central Florida. Spends winters in the tropics. Preferred habitats include beech, maple, and hemlock forests, usually under the canopy but it may also be found in clearings and wooded ravines.

Breeding and Nesting

Acadian Flycatcher: Two to four brown-spotted, creamy white eggs are laid in a sloppy cup nest made of sticks, grass, dried stems, bits of bark, and cobweb. Nest is lined with grass, hair, and plant down, and built on a horizontal limb well out from the trunk. Incubation ranges from 13 to 15 days and is carried out by the female.

Foraging and Feeding

Acadian Flycatcher: Eats a wide variety of flying insects. Perches in shade on lower to mid-level branches in thick trees to await food, then dashes out to snatch insect in mid-air.

Vocalization

Acadian Flycatcher: Call is a soft "peace" or "peeet." On breeding grounds, male utters a mechanical "ti,ti,ti,ti" while moving from one perch to another.

Similar Species

Acadian Flycatcher: Least Flycatcher has smaller bill, bright white wing-bars and eye ring, more brown-olive upperparts, and gray-white underparts, and different voice.