Subject: [Tweeters] Mercer Island - Dusky Flycatcher!
Date: May 16 21:52:20 2016
From: Joshua Glant - josh.n.glant at gmail.com
Hello Tweets,
An already pleasant afternoon visit to my patch, Ellis Pond, turned
unforgettable when I began to hear an unusual call near me in the trees. It
was a soft, yet clearly audible, "whit". I immediately had my suspicions
for what species was making the sound, and I soon found the source: a
small, grayish empid perched above me! It had an all-dark bill with a
curved culmen, and seemingly a pretty short primary projection. The
flycatcher's tail twitched upwards once, but the wings remained still until
the bird flew out of sight, later being heard calling and perhaps briefly
seen in mid-level foliage through the remainder of my visit. Dusky
flycatcher, a lifer, is my best patch bird to date! It supersedes the flock
of 14 tundra swans that flew northeast overhead on December 20th, 2015, an
awesome sight in its own right and another lifer I got from my patch. My
neighborhood has now had one Nashville warbler, two Cassin's vireos and a
dusky flycatcher within a month! What a spring it has been here on Mercer
Island.
eBird checklist with audio here:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S29721308
The dusky flycatcher was obviously the highlight of today, but my highest
patch visit total to date (30 species) was also fun.
Good birding, Joshua Glant
Mercer Island, WA
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20160516/d1abcd38/attachment.htm