Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various Eurasian birds of the family Muscicapidae that feed on insects, usually catching the insects in flight.
- noun Any of various similar birds of the family Tyrannidae, found throughout the Americas.
- noun Any of various similar birds of the Monarchidae family, found in Asia, Africa, and Australia, or the Ptilogonatidae family, found primarily in Central America.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who or that which catches or entraps flies or other winged insects.
- noun Specifically, a bird which habitually pursues and captures insects on the wing.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) One of numerous species of birds that feed upon insects, which they take on the wing.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of several
birds , of the familiesMuscicapidae (inEurope andAsia ) andTyrannidae (in theAmericas ), that catchinsects in flight.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun large American birds that characteristically catch insects on the wing
- noun any of a large group of small songbirds that feed on insects taken on the wing
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Sure, some birds have names that describe their activities, such as flycatcher, or gnatcatcher, or their general appearance, such as bluebird, or the place they tend to loiter, such as cowbird.
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A short distance up the cañon of the west branch of Clear Creek, a new kind of flycatcher was first heard, and presently seen with my glass.
Birds of the Rockies 1896
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Sure, some birds have names that describe their activities, such as flycatcher, or gnatcatcher, or their general appearance, such as bluebird, or the place they tend to loiter, such as cowbird.
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I have to admit that I don’t know what kind of flycatcher they are although they’ve raised many clutches either on the shutter or in a nest a foot away from the back door.
Marlowe day! 2007
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I have to admit that I don’t know what kind of flycatcher they are although they’ve raised many clutches either on the shutter or in a nest a foot away from the back door.
Backyard birding 2007
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Scissor-tailed flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus fomerly, Milvulus forficatus; protonym, Muscivora forficata, also known as the Texas bird-of-paradise and the swallow-tailed flycatcher, photographed at Manhattan, Kansas.
Mystery bird: scissor-tailed flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus 2011
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Response: This is an adult scissor-tailed flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus, a member of the genus Tyrannus, so named for their pugnacious nature when defending their territories against marauding crows and other, even larger, predators.
Mystery bird: scissor-tailed flycatcher, Tyrannus forficatus 2011
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For 20 minutes, we stood by a swampy pond, trying to home in on a small fluttering piratic flycatcher in the brambles.
Strange Paradise 2009
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It turns out that a charismatic endangered bird — the southwestern willow flycatcher — is known to nest in the offending shrubs.
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Last March, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the government, charging that indiscriminately killing tamarisks jeopardizes the flycatcher
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