Adults are 16.5 cm (6.5 in) long and weigh 24 g (0.85 oz). They have olive-brown upperparts, a white eye ring, a bushy divided
crest and a white crown patch in the parting. The throat is pale and the breast greyish, with pale yellow lower underparts. The call is a nasal breeer, and the song is a wheezing zhu-zhee-zhu-zhee.
Elaenia flavogaster semipagana –
Sclater, PL, 1862: found in southwestern Colombia, western and southern
Ecuador and northwestern Peru
Habitat
This is a common bird in semi-open woodland, scrub, gardens and cultivation. The yellow-bellied elaenia is a noisy and conspicuous bird which feeds on
berries and
insects. The latter are usually caught from mid-air after the bird
sallies from a perch, and sometimes picked up from plants.[3] The species will also join
mixed-species feeding flocks on occasion, typically staying quite some distance up in the trees.[4]
It makes a cup nest and lays two cream eggs with reddish blotches at the larger end. The female incubates for 16 days, with about the same period to fledging.
Omnivorousmammals as small as the
common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) will eagerly plunder yellow-bellied elaenia nests in the undergrowth—perhaps more often during the
dry season when fruits are scarce—despite the birds' attempts to defend their offspring.[5]
Conservation status
The yellow-bellied elaenia is a common and wide-ranging bird, not considered threatened by the
IUCN.[1]
Skutch, Alexander F. (1960).
"Yellow-bellied elaenia"(PDF). Life Histories of Central American Birds II. Pacific Coast Avifauna, Number 34. Berkeley, California: Cooper Ornithological Society. pp. 287–306.