Pelzeln's Tody-Tyrant

Pelzeln's tody-tyrant is about 9 cm (3.5 in) long and weighs 7.7 to 9 g (0.27 to 0.32 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a brownish olive crown. Their lores and a thin eye-ring are whitish on an otherwise brownish olive face. Their back and rump are brownish olive. Their wings are dusky olive-brown with whitish edges on the flight feathers and tips of the coverts; the latter show as two narrow wing bars. Their tail is dusky olive-brown. Their throat and underparts are mostly white with some faint grayish streaking. They have a whitish to pale gray iris, a gray bill, and gray legs and feet.

Sources differ on the range of Pelzeln's tody-tyrant. The International Ornithologists' Union and the Clements taxonomy list it as occurring only in Brazil. BirdLife International adds Suriname. The map in van Perlo's Field Guide to the Birds of Brazil shows the species on the Brazil/Venezuela border and the author does not state that the species is endemic to Brazil; Hilty's Birds of Venezuela states that it may occur in the southern part of the country. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World places it in Brazil and "probably also in adjacent Venezuela and Colombia". The South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society has documented records in all three of Brazil, Suriname, and Venezuela. All of the sources that provide detail agree that it is present in scattered sites along the Negro River and its tributaries, and Cornell and BirdLife International add sites in Brazil's Roraima and Pará states. Pelzeln's tody-tyrant inhabits woodlands on campinarana white-sand soils. Trees there are typically stunted but may grow tall.

The diet and foraging technique of Pelzeln's tody-tyrant are not well known. It typically forages in the canopy and subcanopy. It is thought to mostly take prey like other members of its genus, using short upward sallies from a perch to grab it from the underside of leaves.