Roraiman Flycatcher

Uncommon to locally fairly common in the right cloud-forest band but easily overlooked; a quiet, retiring understory bird that most trips miss unless specifically worked. Far easier to detect by voice than by sight.

Largest of the forest Myiophobus. Warm brown above, olive-white below with diffuse blurry streaking on the breast; two BOLD rusty/cinnamon wingbars, a narrow broken white eyering, and a concealed yellow-orange coronal patch (flared only in display/agitation; absent or reduced in female). Stubby bill, upright posture. The combination of bold rusty wingbars + broken eyering + blurry breast streaking is diagnostic in tepui understory.

Lower and middle levels of humid montane and cloud forest, forest edge and treefall gaps, often on sandy/white-sand soils; tepui populations mostly below ~2000 m.

Solitary or in pairs at low to mid levels; perches upright and makes short sally-strikes to foliage; only loosely joins mixed-species flocks. Inconspicuous and sluggish between sallies.

A thin, high, slightly buzzy/sibilant note and a short high-pitched series; song an unobtrusive high seep repeated at intervals — easy to walk past. Trainee search term: 'Roraiman Flycatcher Myiophobus roraimae' on Xeno-canto and Macaulay Library; filter recordings to Bolívar/Amazonas, Venezuela to hear the tepui (roraimae) voice rather than Andean cuts.

Pre-load the call on your phone the night before and work the cloud-forest band on La Escalera at first light — pish lightly and watch low foliage for an upright, big-headed brown flycatcher with rusty bars. Taxonomy note for clients: most checklists keep this as Myiophobus roraimae; the tepui form roraimae is the Pantepui endemic, while disjunct Andean populations are not — so frame it as 'the tepui Roraiman Flycatcher.'