the.com/flycatcher
A bird whose entire career strategy is sitting still until lunch flies by.
means A bird (or a device, like flypaper) that catches flying insects, typically by sallying out from a perch to snap them mid-air.
from A straightforward English compound: 'fly' + 'catcher,' describing exactly what it does. The name was applied to various unrelated bird families worldwide (Old World flycatchers, Tyrant flycatchers in the Americas) simply because so many birds independently evolved the same perch-and-pounce insect-hunting habit — a case of a name coined on behavior rather than ancestry.
- hunting style
- waits on a perch, darts out, snaps bug midair
- family size
- over 400 species worldwide, wildly unrelated to each other
- name irony
- many catch more wasps and moths than flies
- convergent evolution
- old world and new world types look alike, separately evolved