How to Identify aEastern Wood-Pewee
Contopus virens · 5.9 in (15 cm)
Male vs. female
Male
Olive-gray above, pale below with a dusky vest, two pale wingbars and long wings. Sexes look alike.
Female
Identical to the male in the field.
Male photo: Rhododendrites / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Second photo: TonyCastro / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Field marks
- No eye-ring, unlike the small Empidonax flycatchers
- Long wingtips reaching well down the tail
- Two dull whitish wingbars
- Dusky wash down the sides forming a loose vest
Similar species
What it sounds like
A slow, plaintive, whistled "pee-a-wee" that slurs down then up, with a downslurred "peeur" mixed in.
Behaviour that gives it away
Returns to the same exposed dead branch again and again between sallies, unlike the restless Empidonax flycatchers.
Habitat & range
Deciduous and mixed forest with open understorey across the eastern United States in summer.
When you'll see it
A summer visitor that arrives to breed in eastern and central North America.
What it eats
Flying insects caught on repeated sallies from a favoured perch.
Did you know?
Its lazy whistled song is one of the few bird sounds heard through the hottest, stillest part of a summer afternoon.
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