The elegant Scissor-tailed Flycatcher gracing our region is the second Scissor-tailed to land in Massachusetts in as many years, two winters in a row. They both made their stopovers at similar habitats, wide open fields with berry-rich shrubs and trees outlining the fields. Last year’s Scissor-tailed perched on the Bluebird boxes at Audubon’s Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, foraging over the field for insects and dining on crabapple and bittersweet berries. This year’s beauty is making her home in a field that includes a pigpen! She skirts the edges looking for berries and insects but spends most of her time perched in the pen with Ethel and Annie. In addition to the insects the Scissor-tailed forages for in the pen and farm fileds, there are crabapple trees, bittersweet, Staghorn Sumac, and Pokeberry.
She has the gorgeous tail characteristic of the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher however, the male’s tails are even longer. The long forked tails assist the expert aerialists in catching insects mid-air, a behavior called ‘hawking.’ Hawking is described as a feeding strategy where the bird sallies forth from a perch to snatch an insect mid-flight, then returns to the same, or to a different, perch.
If we lived in Texas or Oklahoma, these birds would be run of the mill, but here in Massachusetts she is a rare treat. As much as she is a joy to observe, Miss Scissor-tailed is sooo far north and east of her range, I truly hope she departs soon. She should be in Central America by this time of year!
Many have noticed when observing her, she tolerates very well the farm animals and small quiet groups of onlookers however, one recent Wednesday we observed a birding group of 16 tromping noisily through the snow-crusted field. The were boisterous and talking loudly amongst themselves. The Scissor-tailed suddenly became very still. She did not budge from her perch for a good 25 minutes while the group was there. The very moment they left the field, she resumed foraging. With temperatures in the teens, these migrating birds need every minute of the shortened days of sunlight to forage. Several of us turned to shush the group, but they ignored and even the group leader was holding a very audible discussion in close proximity to the bird, about the bird.
It would have been so much kinder to the little migrant if the very large group broke up into smaller groups. The leader sets the tone of the encounter. She could have offered the bird’s life history back at their vans and made an effort to keep the chatter down. There were many other interesting birds in the surrounding field to look at while they awaited their turn. The group didn’t get to see the beautiful Scissor-tail in action displaying her fascinating foraging habit because she was frightened and stayed very still. Tenderly and reverentially is the way to approach wildlife, especially one so vulnerable. People will surely see much more of the animal’s natural behavior if we at least try to make ourselves invisible.
Orange = breeding, yellow = migration, blue = wintering.