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Great kiskadee

species of bird

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ202804
Source-derived summary

The great kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus) is a passerine bird in the tyrant flycatcher family Tyrannidae. It is the only member of the genus Pitangus. It breeds in open woodland with some tall trees, including cultivation and around human habitation. It is found from the extreme southern United States south to Argentina. It was introduced to Bermuda in 1957, and to Tobago in about 1970.

Taxonomy

The great kiskadee was described and illustrated in 1648 by the German naturalist Georg Marcgrave in the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae. He used the name Pitangua-guaçu, the word for a large flycatcher in the Tupi language. In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the species in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. He used the French name La Pie-Griesche jaune de Cayenne and the Latin name Lanius Cayanensis Luteus. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Great kiskadee” as species of bird. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Great, kiskadee and species.

Editorial reviewUseful for establishing the present vocabulary of the subject while preserving a route back to the evidence on which that vocabulary rests. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1957, 1970, 1648, 1760—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Great, kiskadee and species providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Great kiskadee”, the useful work is to connect “species of bird” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q202804. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1970, 1648 and 1760.

Critical limits

Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Check terminology, classification and the date of the cited evidence. Scientific names and technical consensus can change while older records retain historical value.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Great kiskadee primary sources, Great kiskadee archive and Great research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Great kiskadee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.