Small-headed Elaenia

The small-headed elaenia is 16 to 20 cm (6.3 to 7.9 in) long and weighs 24 to 34.5 g (0.85 to 1.2 oz). It is a large elaenia without a crest. The sexes have the same plumage. Adults have a dark olive head with lighter cheeks, a dusky loral spot, and a thin whitish eyering. Their upperparts are dark olive. Their wings are mostly dusky with pale edges on the flight feathers. The tips of their wing coverts are whitish to yellowish and show as two bars on the closed wing. Their tail is dusky with white tips on unworn feathers. Their chin and throat are grayish yellow, their breast and flanks dull gray-olive, and their belly and undertail coverts grayish yellow. Both sexes have a brown iris, a stubby blackish brown to black bill with a pinkish base to the mandible, and brown to black legs and feet. Juveniles have dark rufescent brown upperparts and dirty grayish white underparts.

The small-headed elaenia is found in Brazil locally in Bahia and from southern Mato Grosso do Sul and Minas Gerais south into extreme northern Uruguay and west into eastern Paraguay and northeastern Argentina. It inhabits the undergrowth and edges of humid subtropical and temperate forest, secondary forest, and coastal restinga. It also inhabits forest fragments and patches of young secondary forest. In elevation it occurs between 2,150 and 3,000 m (7,100 and 9,800 ft) in Brazil.

The small-headed elaenia feeds on insects and fruit. Like its former "parent" the highland elaenia, it primarily forages near the top of the forest canopy but tends to remain hidden. It finds food by gleaning while perched, while briefly hovering, and with short upward sallies to take insects in mid-air.