Finding flycatchers; Species easier to identify by sound and habitat

As a birding enthusiast, what comes to your mind when someone says "flycatcher?"

Your response will have a great deal to do with your birding experiences, I am sure. If you have recently been to Oklahoma or Texas, you may think of the scissor-tailed flycatcher you saw on a wire along some country road. It doesn't seem possible that it could fly with a tail like that.

If you are from southern Arizona, you'd immediately conjure up an image of the striking vermillion flycatcher. With that name, what else do you need to know? It's so spectacular, almost everyone can remember exactly where and when they saw their first one. My first one was in St. George, Utah. The evening sun lit it up as if it was a flying light bulb. It was very noisy with a high-pitched call that it repeated over and over while it incessantly pumped its tail in a nervous-twitch sort of way.

If you were paging through your field guide in search of a favorite flycatcher, you'd have to stop to admire the kingbirds. In the Inland Northwest we have the eastern kingbird, which is not exactly striking, but looks quite sharp in crisp black and white. The western kingbird, however, has an unusually softly-shaded gray head and back with a lemon-yellow underside.

You might very well remember the first time you saw a kingbird live up to its names as it ferociously fought off intruder birds as large as hawks. Notice I wrote "names," plural. Their common name is "king" for an obvious reason, and their family name, "tyrant flycatcher," tells what type of a king they are in their realm. It's all too true.

The first to come to my mind of the Inland Northwest flycatchers are the pewees. We have two: the olive-sided flycatcher and the western wood-pewee. I particularly favor the latter. Each summer a pair nests somewhere in my neighborhood and their song, a descending whistle variously described in the field guides as hazy, burry and nasally, is the main bird noise I hear at any time from 4 a.m. until well after dark. To me, it is the sound of summer.

Or, if you especially like winter birds, you might have Say's phoebe for your answer. Who wouldn't be surprised to find a flycatcher in winter? In the banana belt of the Inland Northwest, the Lewiston area, to be specific, you often can. It is also unique in our area as a summer flycatcher of the more open, drier areas, often far from water. Its robin-like appearance stands out in treeless areas throughout central Washington.

Any of these five flycatchers from the Inland Northwest are a distinctive member from the family Tyrannidae, the tyrant flycatchers. It is the first family in the section of the field guide that includes the passerines - the perching birds or the song birds, depending on which end of the bird you prefer. This family is only found in the Americas, and most of its 425 species are located in the tropics. We have 37 species that nest in the United States and Canada.

Flycatchers are unique among the passerines in that their song- making apparatus, the syrinx, is of a much simpler design, thus producing a much simpler song. Also, all the other passerine species have songs that they learn as they mature. Because of this, there is often a wide diversity within a species as to song composition. In many species, such as song sparrows, there are even distinct regional dialects to their songs.

Not so with flycatchers. Their simple, nonmusical songs are preprogrammed. They are not learned, but are innate. Flycatchers are hatched with their song already floating around in their minds - talk about getting a song stuck in your head. And their songs totally lack for regional diversity. In fact, flycatchers are missing that portion of the brain used by the other passerines in song-making. I guess that the flycatchers would be the rappers of the bird musical industry.

Other distinctive characteristics seen within the Inland Northwest tyrant flycatchers include a lack of sexual dimorphism - males and females look the same. These flycatchers are monogamous. They possess beak and wing adaptations for a hunting style and a diet that depends on catching insects in the air, a behavior referred to as flycatching or hawking. And they have varied habitat requirements that are quite specific for each species despite the commonality of their general lifestyles.

Besides these five species of Inland Northwest pewees, phoebes and kingbirds, one also might see another eight flycatcher species. But I hesitate to mention this group. For if one of these flycatchers is the first to come to your mind, it might do so in the form of either some sort of bird identification nightmare from which you awake screaming, or a ruined field experience spent in total frustration. In fact, more often than not, members of these eight species will end up marked on a checklist as simply "flycatcher sp" to indicate they are unidentifiable.

What are these eight little undistinguishable demons of the checklist world? These are the flycatchers grouped together into the genus empidonax, and commonly referred to as the "empids." Actually, they are collectively referred to by a number of other names, none of which are printable.

More specifically, the empids are a group of small, drab, olive- gray birds, usually tinged with varying degrees of yellow underneath, and usually with distinctive wing bars and eye rings. As I have indicated already, these flycatchers are all very similar in appearance. Often an individual bird will have more plumage variation from season to season than there is between species. In fact, ornithologists - those scientists who study birds - often cannot identify an empid species while holding it in their hands. And to add insult to injury, the genus name of these flycatchers translates as "king of the gnats." What kind of a kingdom is that?

So, as I indicated, this group is not likely to include the average birder's favorite type of flycatcher. But, don't totally despair - and don't resign yourself to simply marking "empid" on your checklist. With careful attention, the eight empid species in the Inland Northwest can be sorted out. One must, however, go beyond the typical bird "watching" approach.

While being physically indistinguishable, each empid species has a unique song and a unique breeding habitat. So, as soon as you realize that you are looking at an empid, quit looking. Listen, and if it sings, you have your identification. Of course, sorting out bird songs is not as easy as working your way through a field guide, but with these guys it is so much more rewarding.

I do not have an ear for many of the subtleties of bird songs, so song identification is an ongoing challenge for me. But when I consider the options, the process takes on a whole new significance with these flycatchers. I am aided, though, by knowing where to look, for each has its own preferred summer habitat.

Thus by knowing a little about song and habitat, I can usually figure out my summer empids without too much hair pulling. Breeding birds don't have to be that difficult, but you should still probably close your eyes and carefully move away from any migrating empid. These birds usually don't sing, and they can be temporarily in any habitat.

No matter where you specifically look in the Inland Northwest, at least one of the eight empids will be summering. I will leave it to the details of the field guides to describe the song and habitat differences among these flycatchers, but a listing of the species shouldn't be too painful.

Our empids include the least flycatcher and the gray flycatcher, the two species that are, along with the alder flycatcher, the most difficult to locate in the Inland Northwest.

The other six species can be placed in pairs of what are called "cryptic" species. Cryptic refers to the relative degree of physical similarity between the two species, and does not indicate some sort of birding horror show - unless, again, one tries to sort these birds out in the fall.

Hammond's flycatcher and dusky flycatcher form a cryptic pair of forest empids. Cordilleran flycatcher and Pacific-slope flycatcher form a cryptic pair often just called the "western flycatcher group." Not only are these two species identical in appearance, but there is currently real question about the reliability of song in differentiating between them. For these two I have certainly gone beyond simply listing them as "empid sp," but I do tremble at the thought of writing more than "western flycatcher" in my field notes.

The other cryptic pair was, until 1973, considered by ornithologists as a single species. Traill's flycatcher was the empid of thickets along streams. Now, however, we have the alder flycatcher and the willow flycatcher. The alder is not known to nest in the Inland Northwest, but migrates through to its Canadian and Alaskan breeding grounds. There are, however, occasional reports each year of alders summering south of the Canadian border.

The willow, however, is one of the easiest empids to locate. Find the habitat it was named for and watch and listen. Its song is unmistakable - as described in most field guides, it's a sneezy "FITZ-bew," with a strong accent on the first syllable. Its call is a low, full "whit" that makes it unquestionably a willow flycatcher.

Its appearance is even a bit unique, as far as empids go. It lacks the white eye ring seen in all other empids, it has relatively indistinct wing bars, and it is more darkly brown overall. But if it is breeding season, and even if you can't see detail or hear a song or a call, if it's a flycatcher in a swamp, nesting in a willow thicket, it's a willow flycatcher. It's as simple as that.

The three other northern North America empids are the yellow- bellied flycatcher, which breeds mainly in Canada and migrates over the eastern United States; the Acadian flycatcher, which is strictly an eastern United States species; and the buff-breasted flycatcher, which is a Mexican species that barely reaches into southern Arizona and New Mexico.

OK, now what comes to mind with the word "flycatcher?" Hopefully not a personal episode of "Birding Tales from the Crypt." Forget about the empids in migration and work instead on your shorebird skills during that time of year.

But in the heat of the summer, when the air is full of bugs, pick an empid species, go out and find its preferred nesting habitat, and listen for its simple, but unique song. Not only will you begin to remove "empid sp" from your field notebook, but you'll feel a real sense of accomplishment in having defeated the flycatcher demons.

Are there birds at your feeder you can't identify? Do you have questions about a bird you saw soaring the skies of Kootenai County? "Birding in Kootenai County" is a monthly feature of Handle Extra. Stephen L. Lindsay is an avid Kootenai County birder and encourages readers to e-mail him with birding qustions. When possible, he will respond in future columns. His e-mail address is slindsay@my180.net.

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