Howdy everyone! Big thanks to Brad for his latest contribution to the wild side. Apparently those Crabbies can be devious – you bad Crabbie, very very very bad Crabbie! (my end of year bonus also includes Seinfeld references, not just Monty Python .. cha-ching link here). The plan was to get both my race recaps done while Brad held down the fort – lazy Bri only finished one, but it was a biggie. If you need some material to help you get to sleep the long and dry recap of the bittersweet 100K ultra attempt is now posted (link here). Should get the other race done by the end of the week. With all the hoopla around the acquisition of a certain “blue bird” company, thought it would be a perfect time to bring out today’s featured feathered friend.
Let me guess, you thought it was going to be a “blue” bird – well, maybe at least some bluish hue to it. Nope! Our bird is colorful, but no blue. So, why is this such a perfect time to feature this particular bird … could it be Elon’s favorite bird..hit the jump and I’ll explain everything.
I’m pretty sure this particular bird has no idea what a tweet is. Clearly by the fact the head isn’t drooping down, shoulders hunched over and have a thumb talon 4 times bigger that the rest of the fingers, our feature is NOT addicted to a cell phone – also probably goes without saying, no idea what social media is. No folks, our specimen is only related to the blue bird company by name. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Social Flycatcher.
Unlike the blue bird, this Flycatcher doesn’t “call” in 280 character or less texts, rather uses something that is quickly becoming a thing of the past for humans – a voice. Mr. Yellow here (honestly, it could be a Mrs. as they look identical and thankfully they do not use pronouns in their headers), has a couple of different calls/songs. According to eBird, they have a morning song that is a bit twillish – imagine what a rubber ducky fart might sound like. Another one of their calls sound more like a rubber sandal being dragged across a pane of glass (that was not my original comparison, but you can thank me later as that image would never ever leave your head). Lastly, they have a steady, ~3 second spaced chirp that sounds exactly like….a bird chirping.
It was that last “chirping” call that the other birders we ran into were distinctly listening for. In fact, I didn’t know it had other calls until I was researching for this post. Before I get into more details about the bird itself, let’s start back at the beginning and cover where we found this border crossing specimen.
This Social Flycatcher was probably the second or third most sought after “rarity” in the Rio Grande Valley. The first was easily the Bat Falcon (link here), which we had already tinned a few days earlier at Santa Ana NWR. Linda was also hearing (and seeing) a lot of talk about this Social Flycatcher showing up on the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus located in Brownsville. I will admit it, I was originally not too keen in going after it thanks to the family it belongs to. Sparrows (or little brown jobbers) are a pain in the ass to try and identify – wanna know what else bucks the keister – FLYCATCHERS. There were visions of standing around staring at a woods going “that looks like a Flycatcher is that it?” (fellow birder – nope), “that kinda looks like a Flycatcher is that it?” (fellow annoyed birder – nope), “wait, that is kinda behaving like a Flycatcher is that it?” (fellow birder whacks me over the head with his monopod). Sorry, none of that sounded “enjoyable”, so kept dragging my heals when Linda would bring it up.
Ron and I ended up joining with a guided birding group – Encroaching, stealthily adding ourselves to the mix, globbing onto, taking out two stragglers and throwing them behind some weeds so no one noticed our addition… all would work ha. They were nice enough to point out a pair of Green Kingfishers as we were passing (which we badly needed). Took the opportunity to ask about the Bat Falcon – at that time we didn’t know where it was hanging out. They had two very knowledgeable guides who turned out to be Santa Ana NWR volunteers who gave this tour for free several times a week. We really learned a lot and added some key birds thanks to the group’s help. Anyway, a long story to simply point out that another member of the group asked if we had seen the Social Flycatcher yet. Reliving the monopod nightmare, confessed I wasn’t too eager to go after a bird that looks so similar to others. He quickly corrected me, said it looks more like a Great Kiskadee with a tiny bill (link here). Even more helpful, told exactly where to park and where it was!
Great Kiskadee’s are strikingly different from many of the other Flycatchers, so I had a chance of finding it, although the “tiny” bill still had a possibility of a lethal monopod strike to the noggin. Sheepishly returned to Linda and told her I was interested and after getting the obligatory ear full of told you so’s, she signed onto the Whats App chase group and starting keeping tabs on sightings. Unlike the Bat Falcon, it was not keeping a tight schedule – chaotic times for random lengths of visit (none more than 20 minutes or so).
We had to drop Ron off at the Brownsville airport for his return trip (he’s still in the career grind). Being that close, we drove over to the campus about an hour before he had to be at the terminal. That campus is really nice! They have a very nice walkway across a resaca where this bird was hanging out. Got to the place the Santa Ana birder told us about and Ron immediately went to work talking up the other birders for info – no recent sightings beyond a morning report. Guess what I did see??? plenty of – that’s right Great Kiskadees and we learned it was often hanging out with them….that’s just great…slowly got myself out of tripod swinging range. There is one very helpful clue beyond the bill size and that is the fact Kiskadees are chatterboxes and sound more like a rubber ducky the night after eating chili – not Texas chili … chili violated with beans. As long as it would call, I wouldn’t need to risk a hospital visit.
After 40 minutes or so, it was time get Ron to the airport – we had struck out. Fortunately, I had a few more days to try again. I wish I could have taken a picture of Ron’s face when he found out the Flycatcher had shown up 30 minutes after we left and while he was still waiting for the scanners to open up – apparently you didn’t need to be at their little airport that early. I know he is still ticked about the miss.
Obviously Linda and I made it back and had the opportunity to tin this rare bird. A very nice add for my Average Year (link here) and one that Ron would be able to tin this yea (I did not just smirk, that was not a smirk, nope, definitely not a smirk.. as far as you know).
So, getting back to the bird, why so special? The Social Flycatcher is not considered a US bird. Social in this context is somewhere between Mexico and South America. This is a screen of the sightings from eBird.
Need to bring you in a bit so you can see where it just touches the tip of Texas.
Well, that still doesn’t paint the picture, but you can just see two little squares on the Texas border. We can remedy that…
There, a small pocket of sightings west of McAllen and a few more sightings in the Brownsville area (right side of image). Went ahead and grabbed the Great Kiskadee sightings map which is limited primarily to southern Texas, but clearly more readily accessible which leads to the problem with distinguishing the two.
Now that I have seen the Social Flycatcher’s bill it is pretty easy to tell how much smaller it is than the Greats – generally relative references are not that useful. Beyond that trait and the call differences, they are pretty much identical (from reference pictures, the black through the eye might be a little thicker as it drops down into the back, but that is purely based on this one specimen). Not being a US bird, Cornell has limited information on it, so I can’t pass on interesting facts. What I can say is it appears to have returned to campus (sophomore year!). Ron will likely have another chance to tin it… but that is another year and the counters reset anyway .. I feel bad (that was NOT a smirk).
Thank you for dropping by, hope you enjoyed seeing our special visitor. Should be snowing here when this post gets published.
Wildlife Intrigued 
Sounds like an interesting trip getting this one in the tin.
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This one took a bit of work – it was getting too long as it was so left out the other attempt we made that came up empty …only to have it reported on Whats App like 15 minutes after we left aaaaarrrrgggghhhh – hate when those damn birds refuse to cooperate ha. Thanks for coming by CJ.
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Those darn birds! Hiding when you were there to announce them to the world!😂 makes the hunt even more exciting.
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I know, no respect!..not to mention the nonstop heckling from high above the trees.
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Sounds like identifying Downy’s and Hairy’s with the benefit of them being side by side. Bill size does matter. Your Fly catcher looks rounder than the Kiskadee featured previously. Maybe its all the flies it caught.
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Perfect comparison. Once I finally saw a Hairy Woodpecker, that removed the vagueness on IDing those birds (along with the white dotes on the outside tail feathers. It might have been feeding well at that spot and thus why it decided to come back a second year. Hard to tell sometimes on the ” and Leon is getting laaaaarrrrrger. ” traits it could be cold fluffing or a fly piglet. Thanks for the earlier edit catches.
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Very welcome, leastI could do with the small team at Intrigued. Now that I remember I think it was you who taught me how to tell a Downy from a Hairy woodpecker.
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Possibly, can’t remember for sure. If so, must have been prior to retiring, all that data has been purged ha.
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That’s a lovely flycatcher out looking to catch some flies. How many flies can a flycatcher catch on the fly as the flies are flying by?
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The Owl in the tree say one, da two and a Tawree (or maybe that only applies to Tootsie Pops ha). Thanks for dropping in Timothy, always appreciate it.
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You taught me a new word: resaca. I need that word. Great story of your hunt for what turned out to be a very handsome bird! Yet another reason to plan a trip to our southern border!
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You are welcome Sam – I have to admit, I didn’t know what that word was until we started birding along the Rio Grande River – there are several places where the river decided it was tired of meandering and just cut a section of – those resacas are generally really good for birding! Looks like we are good to go for this January – probably get to the border about mid-January after doing so exploring more into the interior of Texas first. Last we hit San Antonio for the first time and this year planning to hit Austin and Waco for the first time – this keeps the wife happy while I spend the rest of the trip birding ha! Appreciate you dropping in Sam – we did get our snow here last night.
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Cute bird with a rubber ducky fart voice. Nice.
Your Bat Falcon link didn’t show up.
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Crap!!! poor execution on this one, Brad caught a bunch of errors earlier today and now you found a completely missing link – ugh. Fixed now, thanks for bringing that to my attention. No matter how many times I read something (forward and backward), then run it through the syntax checkers something always finds a way through. I bet the next time you hear a birder mention a Social Flycatcher you’ll say “oh, you mean the one with the rubber ducky fart voice” I think that other birder will be both shocked and impressed at the same time – if he just blinks and stares at you then he’s an imposter ha! Appreciate the assist again Vic.
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Oooo…a birder imposter test. I like it.
I think I mentioned that I used to be a web programmer. I sometimes forget links, too…particularly if they are pointing in the wrong direction, like a missing anchor.
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Ah, the missing anchor – been there, done that (although in this case I simply forgot to put the href in completely). Spent a lot of years in the web arena for the company I worked for – was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of that whole web thingy going on at NCSA (at my Alma Mater) and helped kick the wheels and experiment how we could incorporate it into our design engineering department. They eventually moved a group of us into a new Internet Technologies group where we championed Perl, Java, VisualAge, Websphere and everything else web related – actually had world-wide support of our corporate tuned version of Netscape for several years. Ah, those were the days – thanks for sending me down memory lane.
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Prior to being in web programming, remembering the days of FrontPage & Dreamweaver, I had been in database management…Oracle, SQL, Access. Farther back than that, I programmed in BASIC, RPG, COBOL & Assembler. Hacked out much on a punchcard machine and prayed the compiler wouldn’t eat the cards. I dabbled, early on, in Javascript but, never got into Java, Perl, Python, C, C++ or PHP. I burned out in 2010. I have forgotten much.
I worked in state law enforcement (non sworn) and our unit contacted the Netscape people and got a state-proprietary package on Netscape. Miss those days.
Memory lane for me, too…
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I, fortunately, was just past the punch card days and never had to use those damn things (brother did, along with the ticker tape so I know all about them. Right with you on the Oracle, DB2, I owe my marriage to Linda thanks to COBOL, very little BASIC, heavy assembler, Pascal, C, C++, FORTRAN (never had it in school, so had to write everything in C and then translated to FORTRAN with the aid of a Fortran77 book for work on a VAX), Motif, X11R4, LISP, PERL, JAVA and a ton of other languages long since forgotten. Those were the days…of NO SLEEP and pounding Mountain Dews ha!
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I forgot about DB2. Worked in that, too. I never got into FORTRAN or Pascal.
I did some weird work, trying to get email addresses out of SQL and get them into Novell. Yes, I was a government email spammer, sending data to Texas veterans. I worked for the state of Texas for nearly a decade. Cut my teeth on HTML there.
Fun times & lots of coffee. ☕️
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Very nice B, you must come twitching over here, with your luck I’ll tag along and bag me some lifers!
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I’d love to do some birding in your parts – my life list would get a boost of adrenaline. Although, based on stories of the rare twitching over there… might have second thoughts ha. Thanks for coming by B., enjoyed your mini-tour of Scotland.
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Congratulations on this special encounter!! Your photos are superb!!
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Thank you Donna! Admittedly, I had to toss a ton of shots thanks to its propensity to hang in the middle of trees, but eventually it popped out and gave me some good looks. Appreciate the drop in.
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That is one handsome flycatcher! And so beautifully photographed! We don’t have this wonderful bird where I live. That would be so great to see it.
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Not sure if you get the Great Kiskadee around you, but if you do, just imagine a smaller bill and say you saw it ha. I can’t believe this bird showed up again down there – hoping to have another go at it when we head down there this January – now I know exactly what to look for, some hoping the hunt goes a little easier – 3 attempts was starting to wear me down. Take care Kaya and thanks for coming by.
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Congrats on the sighting! To me it looks like a yellow-breasted chat and a shrike got together and this was the result. 😀
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Excellent call there Soybend – definitely has the matching bright yellow of the Chat and that mask is perfect for the Shrike – hopefully the Social didn’t get the gene that impales its prey on sharp objects – those Shrikes can be brutal. Appreciate you dropping in and joining the conversation.
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