Around 5:15pm Thursday 6 May on the north side of the East Ithaca Rec'way between Game Farm & Pine Tree Rd but west of the construction zone I saw a flycatcher which I took to be an EASTERN WOOD-PEWEE despite the somewhat atypical habitat and the fact that it did not call. The bird was sallying from exposed perches on medium-sized mostly unleafed or dead trees over a thick shrub cover. There were no taller trees in that immediate area, and they did not form a closed canopy, but the bird was not at the level of the tops of them. I watched it for several minutes with good binocular views, fairly close, nearly at eye-level from various angles, and often with a dark background. The bird was greenish overall, and lacked the dark contrast between the upper and lower part of the head of an Eastern Phoebe. The breast was washed with pale green, not a vest, not yellow. It had whitish wingbars and edgings to the secondaries and tertials. It had gray lores but no eye-ring. The bill was dark above but yellow-orange below. It had a slight peak on the crown, accentuated by the breeze. It seemed larger, a bit slower, and longer-tailed than an Empidonax, of which I had seen several that day, including Leasts calling and foraging at Jetty Woods, and a couple of silent unidentified birds in various places around the Hawthorn Orchard. Although it stuck around for several minutes, it left by the time I was ready to photograph it. Although it was silent, it did fly directly over me after several of my mediocre whistled imitations of an Eastern Wood-Pewee, and that's what I believe it was (but not an imitation) despite the fact that it's a bit early. I saw no other basin records on eBird, nor have I heard of any yet this year, although there are a couple from nearby, so I'm putting this down as a first. --Dave Nutter
-- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
