Hi everyone, On my way into the Lab of O this morning, I came in via the Podell Boardwalk (the boardwalk that is along the trial system if you exit the Lab's public entrance and head straight south parallel to Sapsucker Woods Rd. One of the birds that I saw was what I'm almost essentially sure (aside from not having a good size reference for comparison) was an OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER. The bird was actively sallying out and flycatching, always from the tops of dead trees away from the main forest edge and never in the canopy. My attention was first drawn to what I thought was a mid-sized woodpecker perched on a treetop, but once had time to look and then see it through 10X binoculars, it's clearly a Contopus flycatcher: no eye-ring, a "vest" of darker feathers on either side of its breast with a lighter-coloured line extending vertically through the middle of its breast. In about 5 minutes of watching the bird, I saw no traces of wingbars (although the angle wasn't great). The undertail coverts seemed to be a mottled grey, and the bird's throat was either clear white or perhaps had faint streaks of grey against a dominant white background. The bill was noticeably broad and heavy (relative, say, to an Eastern Pheobe) and either entirely dark or at times I thought with a warmer very base of the lower mandible (viewing distance was too far for me to feel certain of this, though). The bird's tail also appeared to be proportional short for its body relative to the flycatchers that I typically see in Sapsucker Woods. Leg colour, as best I could tell, was black. The lining of the bird's mouth was a bright yellowy-orange, for what it's worth. Oh, and the bird was entirely silent, and didn't have any behavioural ticks (i.e. no tail flicking or suchlike). Why I think that the bird is an Olive-sided Flycatcher (which shouldn't really be here now) and an Eastern Wood-Pewee are the following things:
- Size: the bird looks too large to be a wood-pewee, although there were never other birds around that would allow me to do a size comparison. However, within 2 minutes I saw together an Eastern Phoebe and Great Crested Flycatcher that I judged to be about the same distance as the Cantopus. My impression was that the Cantopus that I'd just seen fell somewhere in size between phoebe and Great Crested Flycatcher. - Breast: the bird's breast has a very clear demarcation between the white vertical stripe up the middle and the darker vest on the sides. - Throat: basically white in this bird and not the more off-white/grey that I typically associate with Eastern Wood-Pewee - Wing-bars (or lack thereof): I can usually see faint wingbars on wood-pewees, but not on this bird (although viewing angle was far from idea, being almost directly overhead most of the time) So, in sum, mostly I'm basing my ID on the distinct breast markings and throat that I was able to see clearly for long periods of time. The other traits suggesting Olive-sided Flycatcher, size and lack of wing bars, are things that I think I could see, but which I am not entirely comfortable as saying that there present. Hopefully someone else can wander out and find the bird. Wesley Hochachka -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
