Figure 2. This photo is an extract from the photo shown above. The bill of this bird is dark, with some pink at base of mandible. It is not possible to clearly see whether the pink extends to base of maxilla as well. In any event, the bill is not entirely dark or blackish; this is one of the characteristics that allow to differentiate between the Brown-crested Flycatcher and the (otherwise similar) Short-crested Flycatcher, which has an entirely black bill ( Ridgely and Tudor 1994).

However, there is some interindividual variation in bill color of the Brown-crested Flycatcher, even in the same population (i.e. same locality), and the Brown-crested can also have an all, or nearly all, dark bill. See this example. Thus, a bill with a pink base indicates a Brown-crested, but an all-black bill could belong to either a Brown-crested or a Short-crested Flycatcher.