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Sunbathing Vermilion-Crowned Flycatchers Repulse Mates, Lawrence Kilham

Dartmouth Scholarship

Vermilion-crowned Flycatchers (Myiozetetes similis, formerly called Social Flycatchers) remain paired the year around (Skutch 1960). I was watching the members of a pair foraging in close association along the bank of a pond (near Escuintla in the Pacific lowlands of Guatemala) on 29 December 1976, when the two came to a patch of relatively bare earth 1-2 m in extent. This was late in the morning of a hot, sunny day. One of them immediately sprawled belly to the earth, with wings and tail widely spread and head back in the sunbathing posture of a passerine (Hauser 1957). When the …