The flycatcher without a name
On Nov. 8 Lancy Cheng was birding his usual patch near Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John’s and discovered a small flycatcher. Small flycatchers are scarce in Newfoundland and our only common ones are long gone by late fall. Lancy knew that any small flycatcher in November was not only unusual, but probably a rarity. He was able to get some good photos and alerted the birding community.
The rest of the story shows how foolish this birding hobby can be. Many people were able to relocate the bird, which liked to hang out in the willows beside the Virginia River. More excellent photos were taken, including the one by Jared Clark used in today’s Winging It, so you would think that identifying the bird would be a piece of cake.
But no-one knows what it is! It would be an exaggeration to say that all the flycatchers in the Empidonax family look the same. There are 11 species of them in North America and, if not exactly the same, they certainly all look extremely similar. Our only regularly-occurring one of the group is slightly more yellow than the others, hence the name Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, but these birds have all migrated south by November. In fact, all of the North American flycatchers should have migrated south by November. So which one was this bird?
By using subtle features like width of eye-ring, ratio of wingtips to tail length and minor differences in bill length and head shape, some of the other species
can be eliminated from consideration. But even flycatcher experts admit that there are two species that cannot be definitively separated based on looks alone: the alder flycatcher and the willow flycatcher. Unfortunately, those are the species that our flycatcher most resembled.
To tell them apart, you need to hear their songs, which are clearly different. But flycatchers, like most other birds in Newfoundland, do not sing in November. The only noise they might make is a one-syllable call-note. The alder flycatcher says something resembling “pip” and the willow says “whit”. Only a good recording could tell us whether this flycatcher was just a really, really late alder, or a huge rarity – our first ever willow flycatcher.
Try to imagine attempting to
record the faint call-note of a tiny bird, hidden in the willows of a stream bed, with the sound of the creek below and the wind whistling through the branches above. (In fact, this week the wind has been roaring through the branches for much of the time). Lancy’s patience paid off, however, and he was able to get two very weak call-notes recorded, which he emailed around for comments. The comments were inconclusive. The mystery flycatcher wasn’t enunciating clearly enough. Was it to turn out a boondoggle of Muskrat Falls proportions?
Later, other birders were able to hear the bird slightly better, but no better recording was obtained. The consensus was that it sounded more like the ultrarare willow flycatcher.
A sensible person at this point, would conclude that birders are clearly insane: “If you can’t tell by looking at the bird, by studying excellent photos, and even by hearing the call, then who cares what it is?” But that’s crazy talk. We want to know! The detective work is all part of the fun, and if it does get identified as a great rarity, it can possibly go on all kinds of lists: Newfoundland lists, life lists, Canada lists and year’s lists — the list goes on.
This is not the first time a rare bird that was fairly well documented has gone unidentified in St. John’s. In November of 2014 a meadowlark confounded experts from across North America as to whether it was the eastern or a western species. If, as the old feller said, the first step towards understanding is putting a name on things, then apparently we don’t understand much.
At press deadline, the annoying flycatcher without a name had not been seen in 48 hours. There is still hope it may reappear, and someone may get a better recording. Then, just maybe, the bird could be identified. As Emily Dickenson said: “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
Other sightings
On the same day as Lancy discovered the mystery flycatcher, Shawn Fitzpatrick saw an unusually bright-looking orangecrowned warbler in his yard in St. John’s. His photograph confirmed it as the first documented western subspecies of orange-crowned warbler ever for Newfoundland. Isn’t it nice to find a rarity with a name?