This little bird looks a lot like a bunch of other little birds (I didn’t take this picture myself, but it is a picture of the bird in question, nonetheless). I got the picture from a Wikipedia link. The bird is an Empidonax Flycatcher for sure, but there are many different kinds of Empidonax Flycatchers. There are two things that make this little bird significant to us. First, this is reported to be a Pine Flycatcher, a bird never before seen in North America. The reports have been pouring in since it was first spotted in December. It has been in the same place ever since. We drove to Choke Canyon State Park, a hundred miles away, to see it on Saturday. We saw it but there is no way we, Judy or I, could determine which of the Empidonax Flycatchers this really is. There is no agreement among the trained professionals yet either. It looks mostly like a pine flycatcher, but not perfectly. It sounds like a pine flycatcher and responded to a tape of the pine flycatcher. But still, there is debate. We won’t know whether to add this bird to our life-list until the issue is settled by the American Birding Association (ABA). The ABA is the arbiter of all questions birding. They have to determine that this is not a yellow-bellied, Acadian, Alder, Willow, Least, Hammond’s, Gray, Dusky, Pacific-slope, Cordilleran, or Buff-breasted Empidonax flycatcher. There is talk of needing a DNA sample. That causes me some concern; images in my head of darting him and chasing him with a jeep until the tranquilizer takes effect and he falls over, but I’m told all they need is one feather. If the ABA determines this to be a legitimate sighting, they will add the bird to the North American Bird List, and we will add it to our life-list, which brings us to the second reason this bird is significant; our life-list.
We’ve been grinding away at our life-list for years. We added 49 birds in 2006, 19 in 2007, and 24 in 2008. Now we’re at 484. 485 if this sighting holds. We need fifteen or sixteen more birds to get to 500. We’re working hard on the Texas list. We’ve seen all the “hard to miss” ones, all the “should see” ones, and all but three of the “may see” birds. There are more birds yet to see in Texas, but they are either rare or very rare, and you have to be in the right spot at the right time of year. The only way to get one is to wait for a sighting report, then dash to that spot and find the bird before it goes away (or stumble across one ourselves and tell everyone else about it).
500. The great Taylor birding challenge. Maybe in 2009…..
We’ll report back.
