Spectacled Tyrant

The spectacled tyrant is 13 to 16 cm (5.1 to 6.3 in) long and weighs about 20 to 25 g (0.71 to 0.88 oz). Adult males of the nominate subspecies are mostly black. Their primaries are mostly white with black bases and tips. They have bare, fleshy, green-tinged yellow skin around the eye that gives the species its English name. Adult females have a dark brown crown, a buffy or buff-white supercilium, pale lores, and a smaller eye-ring than males on otherwise mostly pale dusky face. Their back is dark brown with black streaks. Their wings have rufous flight feathers and buffy edges on the coverts that show as two wing bars. Their tail is dark. Their underparts are pale dusky to whitish with dusky streaks on the breast. Subspecies H. p. andinus is slightly larger than the nominate. Adult males have less white on their wings than the nominate and adult females have less bold streaking in their breast. Juveniles of both subspecies are similar to their respective adult females. Both sexes of both subspecies have a yellow iris and black legs and feet. Males have a pale yellow bill and females a dusky maxilla and brown mandible.

The spectacled tyrant has a disjunct distribution. The nominate subspecies is found in coastal southeastern and far southern Brazil and in Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina as far south as Río Negro Province. Subspecies H. p. andinus is found in Chile from the Atacama Region south to the Los Lagos Region and separately in Argentina south to northern Santa Cruz Province. It has occurred as a vagrant in Peru and far northeastern Brazil. The spectacled tyrant is a bird of open landscapes such as marshes, grasslands, and pastures, the last two often but not exclusively near water. In Brazil it is found from sea level to 2,000 m (6,600 ft).

The spectacled tyrant feeds on insects and other arthropods. It usually forages singly, chasing prey on the ground or sallying to it from a fence post or a bush or reed.