Yellow-bellied Elaenia

How to find it

It is often easy to see, because it perches in the open and calls often. Look and listen in gardens, farmland and scrubby edges. Learn the nasal buzzy call and the wheezy song, and you will often find it by ear before you see it. Check fence lines: on one Costa Rica tour, birds were wheezing from strands of barbed wire in a pasture with Southern Lapwings and meadowlarks. Scan the tall grass at the edge of an airstrip, where a pair was found feeding at Los Chiles in the far north. A short late afternoon walk near a hotel at Arenal Springs also turned one up.

How to recognise it

This is a small, olive-brown flycatcher. In Costa Rica it is about 15 cm long and weighs about 25 g.

Look for these marks:

Two white wing bars.

A pale gray breast and a pale yellow belly.

A bushy crest.

A narrow white eye ring.

A dark bill with a paler base, and black legs.

The best mark is hidden most of the time. When the bird calls, it raises its crest and shows a white patch in the middle of the crown. When the crest is down, the patch disappears. Young birds are browner and have no white crown patch.

What it sounds like

Recording: Miguel A. Paixão, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It lives in pairs all year and never forms flocks. It eats berries and insects. It catches insects in the air after flying out from a perch, and sometimes picks them off plants.

It sometimes joins mixed-species feeding flocks, but it usually stays well up in the trees. In Costa Rica it breeds from March to July, rarely into August.

Because it perches in the open and calls often, a patient look along fence lines and shrubby edges is usually enough to find one.

Where it lives

It does not need forest. It uses secondary woods, scrub, riverside woods, shade coffee farms, gardens, savannas, pastures and forest edges.

It is a resident on both slopes, from the lowlands up to about 1,850 m, and one account gives about 2,200 m in Costa Rica. It is usually common in the northwest lowlands, though rare in the far northwest. A reserve checklist from the southern Pacific mountains includes it, and one photographer found it in a garden in the Carara area.

When to see it

In Costa Rica it breeds from March to July, rarely into August, which is the season when pairs are busy and calling.

Similar birds

Lesser Elaenia looks very similar but is a bit smaller, less yellow and less crested, and its voice also separates the two. In Costa Rica it is fairly common on the Pacific slope but uncommon in the centre of the country. Mountain Elaenia has no white crown patch, greener upperparts and less yellow underneath, and it lives in higher forests.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans know it as Bobillo, Copetoncillo and Tontillo, as well as by the formal name Elainia Copetona.

Status and conservation

It is a resident (R) on the AOCR list, and the IUCN rates it Least Concern with a very large and stable population.

Photography tips

Its habit of perching in the open and calling often gives you a clear view. Fence lines and shrubby edges are good places to wait. A calling bird raises its crest and shows the white crown patch, so watch for that moment.