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 families Muscicapidae (in Europe and Asia) and Tyrannidae (in the Americas), that catch insects 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

fly + catcher

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Examples

  • 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.

    Birding season: No grousing or sniping 2010

  • 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

  • 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.

    Redskins Insider Podcast -- The Washington Post 2010

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • It turns out that a charismatic endangered bird — the southwestern willow flycatcher — is known to nest in the offending shrubs.

    Uncategorized Blog Posts 2009

  • Last March, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the government, charging that indiscriminately killing tamarisks jeopardizes the flycatcher

    Uncategorized Blog Posts 2009

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