Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Spring Migration summary

Third week of May, where down here close to the Gulf Coast, which an estimated one billion songbirds cross every year in the spring, migration always closed out in a deluge of the dreaded Empidonax flycatchers; in this part of the route five species of drab flycatchers sometimes impossible to tell apart.

Here's the easiest and the commonest, easy because its the smallest, the Least Flycatcher



....and here's a bigger one, identified as a willow flycatcher but could just as easily be an alder flycatcher basically you're not really sure until it says something, vocalizations presumably being how the birds themselves tell each other apart.



Same situation as a bunch of other Neotropical migrants; still a whole vast Northwoods in which to breed up north, getting hammered by habitat destruction down south. Decades past these things would even show up in my yard mid to late May, last ten years not so much.

Anyways they pass through late because they eat flying insects, which mostly only fly when its warm out, so early birds this case would get there only to starve to death, which in a songbird can happen in 48 to 72 hours. The early bird don't always get the worm.

Right after breeding, our songbirds replace most of their feathers, a feat which is at least as metabolically demanding as breeding or migrating, since feathers are composed of protein and once the moult starts its gotta be done ASAP. Migratory songbirds have a choice, moult here after breeding or fly south right after breeding and moult down there. Empidonax flycatchers choose the latter option. So they get here late, breed as rapidly as possible, turn around and head back South, blink and you'll miss 'em.

The Eastern Wood Peewee actually isn't an Empidonax flycatcher, and easier to tell apart from 'em. It is named for its call, which "peeeeooooweeee" is the earliest predawn birdsong in the June forests, they usually call during spring migration too and are usually common as dirt but I ain't sure that I've heard or seen even a single one this year...



Kingbirds are flycatchers too, and the most widely distributed in the Eastern half of the Lower 48 and all across the Canadian Northwoods is the Eastern Kingbird. Interesting because, alone of all our flycatchers, they undergo a radical behavioral shift in the Wet Tropics and become wandering fruit eaters, gathering in enormous flocks. I'm sure they are still common as dirt somewhere, on the coast whole rivers of these things pass by early May. Ain't seen a one, there or here.





Among all these migrant flycatchers, there's gotta be one Uber; the hardest to find, the most specialized in habits, the one that flies the furthest, the one most on the way out. And indeed there is, the robin-sized Olive-sided Flycatcher.



Specializes on bees and wasps, forages almost exclusively from the tops of tall dead trees around forest openings, migrates the longest distance of any flycatcher, winters on the Eastern slopes of the Andes in Chile, Ecuador and Peru, where once again it needs bees and wasps and tall dead snags in forested areas. Besides all this the lowest reproductive rate of any North American flycatcher. its specialized niche limits even the amount of young it can raise.

Population dwindling rapidly, again habitat destruction down south. Only saving grace of finding these things on spring migration is, if one is around, its gonna be a robin-sized bird sitting on top a tall dead tree. Hadn't seen any at all this year, not sure if I did last year, but then yesterday morning early I'm walking my dogs in the Hill Country north of town, climb a steep hill and on the top there's a dead juniper tree maybe five feet tall.

Tallest dead tree around, and there was an Olive-sided Flycatcher perched on top. For me that was a "well hey, thankyou God" moment