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August 20, 1998
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I saw the fork-tailed flycatcher! And it was worth every greenhead bite I got while standing there on the dike at Hellcat. I made finding the fork-tailed flycatcher the main goal for today. I had breakfast and coffee and headed out with binoculars and scope and bird book and notebook. At the gatehouse I asked Randy whether that fork-tailed flycatcher was still there. He confirmed that he'd seen it this morning at the abandoned beaver lodge near the Hellcat dike. I was so determined to find it that I didn't take very much time to look for shorebirds at the salt pannes along the way - although I would have liked to have added the Wilson's phalarope to my list. When I'm focused on a mission, I just go straight for it and stick to it until accomplished. When I got to Hellcat, I saw hundreds and hundreds of swallows. Tree swallows. Bank swallows. Northern rough-winged swallows. How will I ever find the fork-tailed flycatcher among all these? Especially since I was told it doesn't look like the one in the book. The one in the book is an adult and would be unmistakable among all these other birds because of its extremely long tail. But the bird in question is an immature. It doesn't have the full long tail yet and it doesn't have the same markings as the adult. Another birder I ran into said the flycatcher had been seen within the last half hour on the beaver lodge so I plunked myself down on a bench on the dike and watched. Swallows swirled around me. It was practically raining swallows. Greenheads and horseflies bit me. Isn't it a little late for them? I saw a spotted sandpiper and a greater yellowlegs and lots of ducks. I decided sitting still was not a good strategy for avoiding bug bites, so I walked around and looked at the great and snowy egrets on the other side of the path. I climbed up the observation tower and scanned in all directions. While I was on top of the tower, I spotted a small bird perched on the beaver lodge. It looked like a washed out kingbird with a black eye band. I was at the wrong angle to see its tail. The other birder I had talked to had come up to the tower by then and I said to him , what's that funny looking kingbird on the beaver lodge. I started describing it to him - he'd been in such a hurry when he left home that he'd left all three pairs of binoculars at home. I loaned him my binoculars for a closer look and just as I did that the bird moved around a little so we could see the top of its head. It had a dark brown patch on top of its head. The guy says: that's it, that's the bird! We both walked out onto the dike to get a better look at a better angle. Then I could see the forked tail clearly. It's not as long as the adult's would be, but it is definitely forked and this was definitely not a kingbird. It matched the description of an immature fork-tailed flycatcher perfectly. I watched it for a long time. It would stand perched on the beaver lodge moving its head around until it spotted something it wanted to eat - I couldn't see the bugs it was catching, or the bugs the swallows were catching. Once it spotted something it would fly up after it and do a kind of loop-de-loop that landed it back on the lodge again. It was so different from the swallows, who did this flyby thing and swooped down on their prey. The flycatcher went up after it. At one point, I was watching it through binoculars and a snowy egret flew very low over it. The flycatcher didn't move, but I ducked! I wrote the sighting in my notebook and headed home to scratch my fly bites. |
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