Eastern Wood-Pewee

How to find it

Look for it perched upright on posts and on the tips of bare sticks or snags at forest edges and clearings. The Caribbean lowlands in migration are the best bet. Visiting sites south of Limón in October puts you in the path of huge numbers of migrants, and roadside posts and hedgerows near Cahuita National Park are typical places. Birders have met them on Caribbean slope sites, and one birding tour found many in a Central Valley garden during the October migration. Scanning hedgerows and edges in the Central Valley in fall can also turn one up, though most pass through the Caribbean lowlands. Listen for the whistled name before you commit to an identification.

How to recognise it

This is a small flycatcher about 14 cm long.

Look for these marks:

- grayish olive upperparts

- two whitish wing bars

- a dull whitish throat and chest

- a yellowish white belly

- a black upper bill and an orange lower bill with a dark tip

- black legs

It lacks a conspicuous eye ring, which separates it from Empidonax flycatchers. It also has longer, more pointed wings and shorter legs than they do. It is larger and duller than Tropical Pewee. Birders describe the migrants as dun-colored birds sallying from posts.

Age matters in fall. Adults are worn at that season, while immatures have fresh plumage, more contrasting wing bars and a dark tip to the lower bill.

What it sounds like

Recording: Jules Reppert, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It sits upright on an exposed perch, darts out to catch flying insects such as bees, wasps, beetles and flies, then returns to the same perch. It does not eat fruit.

Migrants are usually solitary. At peak passage in Costa Rica several may share an area, each keeping about 9 m from the others. Birds on migration hunt the same way as on the breeding grounds.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it ranges from the lowlands to about 2450 m, and rarely higher. During migration it uses any habitat with trees and shrubs, including the canopy, forest edges, savannas with scattered trees and tree plantations.

At peak migration it is abundant in the Caribbean lowlands. A 2025 group post places one at about 750 m in the Cordillera de Tilarán, Guanacaste, in September. A Costa Rican natural history sheet lists these conservation areas for it: Amistad Caribe, Arenal, Cordillera Volcánica Central, Guanacaste, Osa, Pacífico Central, Tempisque, Tortuguero, Amistad Pacífico and Huetar Norte.

When to see it

It passes through in large numbers from mid August to mid November in fall, with the biggest wave in the third and final weeks of October. The spring passage runs from early March to mid May.

Similar birds

It is very hard to separate from Western Wood-Pewee by sight, so voice is the key clue: in Costa Rica the Eastern is the one that says its name. A pewee seen inside forest is more likely a migrant wood-pewee than a Tropical Pewee, which is a bird of edges and fence lines by pasture.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Beyond the official name Pibí Oriental, Costa Rican photo captions give the nicknames Tontillo and Piguí for this bird.

Status and conservation

The AOCR lists it as a migrant (M), and most birds are just passing through, though a few spend the winter, which is rare, especially below 1200 m.

Photography tips

Watch the posts and bare snags along forest edges and clearings, since it returns to the same exposed perch after each sally. That habit lets you wait for it to come back to a spot you have already framed.