Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS

THE FREE-TOED PERCHING BIRDS

THE TYRANT-BIRDS

(Family Tyrannidm)
The Tyrant-birds form a very large group, embracing over eighty genera and nearly six hundred species and subspecies, and are exclusively confined to the New World, spreading in greater or less numbers over all South, Central, and North America, except the extreme Arctic regions. They are in general birds of small size, few of them exceeding a length of ten inches, and very many falling much below this. In the typical forms the bill is broad, triangular, abruptly decurved, and notched at the tip, and provided along the gape with long bristles, but in other groups of species the bill varies in length and stoutness as well as the degree to which it is provided with bristles. The tarsi are generally short and always exaspidean, that is, enveloped by a series of large scales, which meet near the posterior edge of the inner side, and if separated the space is very narrow and occupied by naked skin or by a row of small scales. The wings are variable in shape, but have the outermost of the ten primaries normal and always more than three fourths the length of the next; the outer primaries are sometimes attenuated near the tip. The tail, which normally consists of twelve, but sometimes of only ten, feathers, is also very variable in shape, ranging from square to graduated and deeply forked.
The Tyrant-birds are mainly insectivorous, performing the same functions in the economy of nature as the Flycatchers of the Old World, but distinguished from them, as well as from other flycatching oscinine birds, by the ten primaries and the peculiar arrangement of the scales of the tarsus, but more especially by the different structure of the organs of voice. As regards coloration, they are for the most part rather dull plumaged birds, of mostly olive hues, frequently relieved by yellow or black, although there are some notable exceptions in which brilliant scarlet plays an important r61e. On the ground of minor structural differences, mostly superficial, as well as supposed divergences in habit and temperament, the Tyrant-birds have been divided into four so-called subfamilies by Dr. Sclater, but these artificial groups are not at all well defined, and the species are often so similar as to be discriminated with great difficulty. The numbers of this family are so great, and their habits so generally uniform for large groups of genera and species, that it will be necessary to select only a few examples for mention or extended treatment.

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