Screaming Piha

The screaming piha is 24 to 26 cm (9.4 to 10 in) long and weighs 68 to 87 g (2.4 to 3.1 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have medium gray upperparts. Their tail and their wings' flight feathers and greater coverts are browner or duskier. Their underparts are a paler gray that is palest on the throat. They have a brown, grayish brown, or gray iris, a black maxilla and a dusky mandible with a pinkish dusky base. Their legs and feet are highly variable with colors that include dark shades of green, brown, gray, and black. Juveniles resemble adults but with cinnamon rufous wing coverts and tips of the tail feathers.

The screaming piha has a disjunct distribution: widespread throughout the Amazon rainforest, as well as the Atlantic Forest (Pernambuco and Bahia coastal forests). The screaming piha inhabits lowland evergreen forest, primarily terra firme but also locally igapó and várzea flooded forest. In elevation it ranges from sea level to 500 m (1,600 ft) in Brazil. It reaches 1,400 m (4,600 ft) in Venezuela though most records there are below 900 m (3,000 ft). It reaches 600 m (2,000 ft) in Colombia, 500 m (1,600 ft) in Ecuador, and 1,150 m (3,800 ft) in Peru.

Despite its abundance and very large range, the screaming piha's diet is poorly known. It feeds on fruit and insects whose relative proportions are thought to vary seasonally. It has been observed feeding on many species of Ficus figs, on members of several other plant families, on Lepidoptera caterpillars, Orthoptera, and other insects, and once on a small lizard. It regurgitates large fruit seeds. The species typically forages singly in the forest's mid-story, taking fruit with a sally from a perch. It occasionally joins mixed-species feeding flocks.