The Call of a Cordilleran Flycatcher

The start of my summer in Prescott - unofficially Memorial Day Weekend - is quite often a slow birding time for me. It's the time of year when I begin making regular weekend escapes from the hot desert and follows a long spell when I don't visit for months at a time. As a result the neighborhood birds are slow to investigate my yard as they've learned to survive elsewhere, in places without handouts of suet, seeds, peanuts, and both fresh and sugar water.

I was heartened to witness a flock of black-headed grosbeaks, long-distance migrants, gathering in the canopy of tall pines on a lane above my street. Year-round residents like mountain chickadees flitted between oak tree branches near my neighbors' front door. Even western bluebirds darted overhead as I jogged through the grounds of a nearby Christian retreat camp.

However after a couple of days, the feeders immediately off my cabin's deck still remained mostly quiet. Acorn woodpeckers did gobble morsels of suet which house finches also imbibed in when not munching on seeds. First one, soon two, then a whole family of pygmy nuthatches also discovered the seeds. However other normal regulars like white-breasted nuthatches and bridled titmice disappointed me when they made only cursory stops, mostly ignoring my humble offerings.

I found some solace listening to the sounds enveloping my property, where the calls of birds reassured me that many forest denizens were nearby. Loudest were a conspiracy of ravens - what their group is called - squawking unnervingly from several houses away. The squeaky cackles of American robins, who always eschew my treats in favor of insects and worms, were easy to identify. Very early one morning, soft hoots of a great-horned owl lulled me back to sleep.

I heard the short, windy tweets of phainopeplas before I spotted the white wing patches of a male in flight. The unmistakable cicada-like trill of a chipping sparrow spilled from a tree. But it was a gentle, single whe-wheet that piqued my curiosity.

The call originated from the back of my cabin, where I heard the sound outside my kitchen window and beyond the southwestern end of my deck. As I inspected my landscaper's recent work, I spied the songbird: a lone cordilleran flycatcher.

Most striking at first was the small bird's coloring, an olive-green backside with yellow-green front, welcome hues in my dusty yard's brown palette. The bird's behavior was unique, hunting in the close-to-ground bushes rather than making flycatcher-like forays from the high branches of trees. A white eye-ring and slight crest definitively identified the small bird as a cordilleran.

I've seen the species in my neighborhood before, usually later in the summer. I speculated this individual was a male, recently migrated, making hopeful calls to a potential mate with tweets that joined the chorus of other birdsongs.

Cordilleran flycatchers breed in coniferous forests, usually near streams. While there are plenty of ponderosa pines around my cabin, the creek beds and washes in my neighborhood are currently bone dry. Of course summer monsoon rains could quickly create babbling brooks. Like all of us, one lone flycatcher might be betting on it.