The Eastern Kingbird perches in open places to catch flying insects. It breeds in North America and migrates to South America for winter.
It is blackish above and white below, with a white band at the tip of its square-ended tail.
Researchers fitted archival geolocators to 12 Eastern Kingbirds breeding in New York, Nebraska and Oregon. New York birds followed the Atlantic coast south to Florida before crossing the Gulf of Mexico. Birds from Nebraska and Oregon often reached the Gulf near the Texas–Louisiana border and then travelled overland toward Central America.
Their movements in South America also varied. All tracked Oregon birds, plus one each from New York and Nebraska, used a single northwestern Amazon region. Many other eastern birds moved through more than one area, while some distant breeding groups still shared a wintering region.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The 12 tracks mapped routes through Central America and nonbreeding areas in South America. Northwestern Amazonia was used by birds from several breeding regions, and the paper identifies it as an important part of the annual range.