{"id":360059,"date":"2026-06-30T10:14:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/?post_type=fauna&p=360059"},"modified":"2026-07-05T23:06:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T04:06:05","slug":"belted-flycatcher","status":"publish","type":"fauna","link":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/fauna\/belted-flycatcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Flycatcher"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":366576,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[]},"collection":[],"country":[51],"fauna-group":[27495],"fauna-type":[27217],"star-rating":[265],"class_list":["post-360059","fauna","type-fauna","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","country-guatemala","fauna-group-flycatchers","fauna-type-birds","star-rating-265"],"acf":{"scientific_name":"Xenotriccus callizonus","animal_description":"The Belted Flycatcher (*Xenotriccus callizonus*) is a small, elusive passerine bird endemic to the highlands of southern Mexico and northern Central America, renowned for its striking and unique \"belt.\" Its most distinctive feature is a bold, crisp black band across the chest, contrasting sharply with a bright yellow belly and a slate-gray head and back. This tyrant flycatcher also boasts a subtle, rufous wing patch and a pale eye-ring that gives it a perpetually alert expression. True to its name, it hunts insects by sallying from a low perch, often flicking its tail nervously, and its secretive nature in dense, oak-pine cloud forests makes it a prized sighting for birdwatchers.","animal_habitat":"The Belted Flycatcher is endemic to the highlands of southern Mexico and northern Central America, with a primary distribution spanning from Chiapas in Mexico through Guatemala, El Salvador, and into western Honduras. Its habitat is restricted to the interior of humid to semi-humid montane and pine-oak forests, typically at elevations between 1,200 and 2,100 meters. It favors dense, tangled understory thickets, particularly those dominated by bamboo (Chusquea species) and other shrubby vegetation, often along ravines, forest edges, or steep slopes near streams. This species avoids open areas and heavily disturbed forests, relying on the structural complexity of its preferred microhabitat for foraging and nesting.","animal_behavior_and_reproduction":"The Belted Flycatcher is a solitary and territorial species, with pairs forming only during the breeding season. Males establish and defend small territories through persistent vocalizations, using a distinctive, high-pitched song to attract a mate and repel rivals. Once a pair bonds, they engage in brief courtship displays involving chases and wing-fluttering. The female builds a compact, cup-shaped nest of plant fibers and spiderwebs, typically placed in a fork of a dense shrub or small tree. She lays a clutch of two to three eggs, which she alone incubates for roughly 14 to 16 days. The male assists in feeding the nestlings, but the female carries the primary brooding duties. A unique aspect of their reproductive strategy is the nest\u2019s extreme concealment and the use of spider silk to bind the structure, which may help it flex with wind and avoid detection by predators. There is no evidence of cooperative breeding or extra-pair copulations in this species.","diet":"The Belted Flycatcher (Xenotriccus callizonus) is an insectivorous bird, with its diet consisting almost exclusively of small arthropods. It primarily forages by sallying from a concealed perch within dense understory vegetation, launching out to snatch flying insects such as small flies, moths, and beetles mid-air, often returning to the same perch. An interesting facet of its feeding behavior is its preference for gleaning prey from the undersides of leaves and twigs, a technique that helps it capture hidden caterpillars and spiders. Unlike many flycatchers, it rarely feeds on the ground, instead specializing in capturing prey in the forest\u2019s lower and middle strata, and it has been observed to occasionally hover briefly to pluck insects from foliage.","colors":"The Belted Flycatcher has a grayish-brown head and back, with a distinct white eye ring and two pale wing bars. Its throat is white, transitioning to a bold, broad chestnut-brown breast band across the upper chest, with a pale yellow belly. This unique \"belt\" is the key identifying feature, and its muted, earthy tones provide camouflage in the dense shrubby understory of its habitat.","fun_facts":"The Belted Flycatcher is a master of disguise with a quirky \"tail-pumping\" habit, constantly bobbing its tail up and down like a nervous metronome, likely to startle insects into movement. Its most unique adaptation is a specialized notch in its bill, allowing it to snap up venomous caterpillars that other birds avoid, neutralizing the toxins with a rapid digestive process. Despite its small size, it performs an acrobatic \"hover-gleaning\" maneuver, fluttering in place to pluck prey from the undersides of leaves, a rare skill among flycatchers in its dense cloud forest habitat.","conservation_status_&_efforts":"The Belted Flycatcher is currently listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, with a declining population trend estimated at fewer than 10,000 mature individuals. Its primary threat is habitat loss due to deforestation for agriculture, cattle ranching, and human settlement within its restricted range in the highlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala. Specific conservation measures include the protection of key areas within the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico, and the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, where monitoring programs are in place. Additionally, efforts focus on promoting sustainable land-use practices and reforestation with native vegetation to maintain the dense understory and bamboo thickets this species requires for breeding and foraging.","endemic":false,"migratory":false,"nocturnal":false,"conservation_status":"Least Concern","ebird_link":{"url":"https:\/\/ebird.org\/species\/belfly1","title":"View on Ebird","target":"_blank"},"animal_related_page":{"url":"https:\/\/animalia.bio\/belted-flycatcher","title":"View on Animalia","target":"_blank"},"fauna_family":"Tyrannidae","fauna_known_nicknames":"Belted Tyrannulet","fauna_average_length":"11.5\u201313 cm \/ 4.5\u20135.1 in","fauna_average_weight":"7\u20139 g \/ 0.25\u20130.32 oz","fauna_wingspan":"17\u201319 cm \/ 6.7\u20137.5 in","fauna_key_physical_feature":"Rufous or chestnut breast band (belt) across the upper chest","fauna_primary_diet":"Insectivore","fauna_geographical_range":"Southern Mexico (Chiapas) to western Guatemala and northern El Salvador","fauna_preferred_habitat":"Montane evergreen forest and pine-oak forest edges, 900\u20132000 m elevation","fauna_social_structure":"Solitary or in pairs","fauna_breeding_site":"Cup nest in a tree fork or shrub","fauna_conservation_status":"Least Concern (LC)","fauna_population_trend":"Decreasing","fauna_spanish_name":"Mosquero ce\u00f1ido","fauna_french_name":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fauna\/360059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fauna"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/fauna"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=360059"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=360059"},{"taxonomy":"fauna-group","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fauna-group?post=360059"},{"taxonomy":"fauna-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fauna-type?post=360059"},{"taxonomy":"star-rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/star-rating?post=360059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}