Chestnut-bellied Chat-Tyrant

The slaty-backed chat-tyrant is 12 to 13 cm (4.7 to 5.1 in) long and weighs 11 to 13 g (0.39 to 0.46 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a dark slaty gray head with a white supercilium. Their upperparts and tail are dark slaty gray to blackish. Their wings are slightly browner than the back. Their breast and belly are deep dark chestnut or reddish brown, their flanks dark gray, and their vent and the middle of their lower belly are buffy white. They have a dark brown or blackish iris, a short, thin, black bill, and blackish to dark dusky gray legs and feet.

The slaty-backed chat-tyrant is found from Táchira in far western Venezuela south through all three ranges of the Colombian Andes, continuing in Ecuador on the western Andean slope to Cotopaxi Province and on the eastern slope for the length of the country and into northern Peru as far as the Marañón River. It primarily inhabits humid montane forest and woodlands in the upper subtropical and temperate zones. It almost exclusively is found in dense vegetation along streams or in wet shady ravines. In elevation it ranges between 1,800 and 2,800 m (5,900 and 9,200 ft) in Venezuela, between 1,600 and 3,000 m (5,200 and 9,800 ft) in Colombia, mostly between 1,700 and 2,800 m (5,600 and 9,200 ft) in Ecuador, and mostly between 1,800 and 3,300 m (5,900 and 10,800 ft) but locally as low as 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in Peru.

The slaty-backed chat-tyrant's diet is not known but is believed to be mostly or entirely small insects. It typically forages in pairs, though sometimes singly, and seldom joins mixed-species feeding flocks unless they pass through its territory. It perches on a low branch or vine along a watercourse and take prey with aerial sallies from it to glean from vegetation or take it in mid-air, and frequently return to the same perch.