Gray-headed Elaenia

The grey-headed elaenia is 12 to 14 cm (4.7 to 5.5 in) long and weighs 9.5 to 17 g (0.34 to 0.60 oz). Adult males have a medium gray crown with a partially concealed white stripe along its middle. They have an indistinct whitish loral spot and a grizzled whitish lower face. Their upperparts are olive gray. Their wings are black with white edges on the inner flight feathers and white tips on the coverts; the last form two bars on the closed wing. Their tail is grayish. Their throat is white, their breast pale gray, and their belly grayish white. Adult females are smaller than males. They have a medium gray crown and nape with a pale yellow strip on their crown. Their upperparts are bright greenish olive. Their wings are black with pale to bright yellow where the male is white. Their tail is grayish. Their throat and breast are pale gray and their belly grayish white with a pale yellow wash. Both sexes have a brown iris with males having in addition a white ring around it, a short black bill with a lighter base to the mandible, and grayish black to black legs and feet.

The grey-headed elaenia is found in northeastern, southern, and southeastern Brazil from Maranhão to Ceará south to northern Rio Grande do Sul. Its range continues south and west from there through southern Bolivia into extreme northwestern Argentina and into eastern Paraguay and northeastern Argentina's Misiones Province. It inhabits the canopy of a variety of forested landscapes including dry forest, gallery forest, cerradão, and dry semi-deciduous woodlands. It has also been noted in regrowing vegetation within Eucalyptus plantations. In elevation it ranges from sea level to 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in Brazil.

The grey-headed elaenia feeds on insects and small fruits like others of its genus. It typically forages in the forest canopy and high on its outer edges, taking food from foliage and twigs by gleaning from a perch and while briefly hovering. It regularly joins mixed-species feeding flocks.