I have a 14 x 65' deck on the back of my house. It overlooks my backyard
which extends out from the house about 60'. At that point it drops off fairly
sharply about 30' into a valley thats about 80-100 yds. wide. The other side
of the valley rises up about 30' again and goes on into 200+ acres old forest
and then pine plantations. Just as my back yard drops off into the
valley-which is laced with beaver dams and has been declared a Federal
Wetlands- there is an edging of scrub shrubs and also trees up to probably
30' tall. In the top of one of those trees today I saw a bird that wasn't a
regular. My first thought was thats a flycatcher. We had several around last
summer when we moved here and they stayed until probably October. I never did
hear them sing and couldn't say for sure what kind they were. My second
thought was its to early for a flycatcher. It was to small for a Phoebe
although the color was about right. But it had wingbars. I was in the kitchen
at this point and had a pair of 8x40's on the table. I looked and it
definitely had wingbars and an eye ring and it looked like a twotone bill.
The throat was lighter than the breast. The feet were dark. The head and back
were dark. I could also see it was singing or calling. It looked slender and
small. At this point I was thinking maybe a wood pewee but its early for
them, too. Then I thought maybe a juvenile phoebe because of the size-and I
have two of them(adult) in the other side yard that spent the winter. Maybe
one of their offspring came back. But the definite eyering? Maybe. I'm not
sure about juvenile phoebes. I went out the garage door, around the side of
the house to the edge of the back yard so I wouldn't startle it. I could hear
it singing pretty well over the multitude of peepers in the wetlands and it
sounded to me like Zeeet Za. That made me think possibly Acadian Flycatcher.
There are about 6-8 good tall dead snags along the tree-yard line and most of
the afternoon it would sit on these and fly out and air catch insects, then
re-land on a snag. Then repeat the process. It was hungry for sure. There
were lots of insects, too. At about 4pm it was about 60yds upstream just at
the edge of my vison range that direction. I took pictures with the telephoto
lense on my 35mm camera. I've been birding since the mid 60's and have seen
my share of out of place birds. This seems to be one of them to me. I hope
its still here tomorrow. Anybody else have any ideas?
Dave White
Zion Crossroads
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