Scissor-tailed Flycatchers,

I remember as a small child, watching birds out the kitchen window in “Joe’s House” as we called the house on highway P in Cross Plains. We lived that house from the time I was four, until the spring of my 4th grade year. I associate the birdwatching with an extended illness and absence from school when I was in third grade, but I remember snow on the feeder and the third grade absence was in the spring. In addition, I was probably reading too well for the story to make sense by third grade, but it’s my story and my memories, so I’m going to tell it my way.

I remember watching birds out the window and finding them in a bird book. I know, now, that the book is a 1960’s vintage Roger Tory Peterson guide to birds in the Eastern United States. To me, as a child, it was this wonderful book that had pictures of all the favorite birds at my feeder if I could only figure out how to find them in the book. I remember seeing Red-headed, Red-bellied, Downy, and Hairy woodpeckers that winter, along with Chickadees, Blue-jays, Northern Cardinals, and nuthatches. I don’t think, that I distinguished between Red-breasted and White-breasted nuthatches at the time, but the picture in my memory is of a White-breasted Nuthatch. There are no sparrows in my memory – did I ignore the small brown birds, or did we not have them at the feeder? I know I saw Purple Finches and American Goldfinches in later years, and I painted a model goldfinch while we lived in that house, but I don’t have any finches in my memory, either.

I do recall one discussion with my mother about a “small, gray, Cardinal". My mother explained that the female cardinal wasn’t red, but I knew that and I thought she wasn’t listening. This wasn’t an ordinary female cardinal, it was a small gray cardinal that acted like a chickadee. Today, I’m guessing the bird was a Tufted Titmouse, which is present in very limited numbers in that part of Wisconsin in the winter.

But my story is about flycatchers and I digress, so I shall return to my story.

I loved that bird book, and I loved looking through he bird book. (Just ask my wife, how I am about seed catalogs and bird books even to this day!) The book was full of the most wonderful and impossible birds. One that caught my fancy was this bird with an impossibly long, forked tail. The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. One afternoon, when the snow was deep upon the feeder, I told my mother that I was going to watch the feeder until I saw a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Mom explained that we didn’t have Scissor-tailed Flycatchers in Wisconsin. Now, I understood – at least partly – about migrant birds at that time. I knew, for example, that we only saw Red-winged Blackbirds and Baltimore Orioles in the summer. I promptly told my mother that if I couldn’t see the bird in the winter, we’d have to keep the bird feeder out for the summer so I could see one. Much to my dismay, mother explained that the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher didn’t ever come to Wisconsin. I was devastated.

Since that time, I have always wanted to see a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. When we moved to Alabama a four years ago, and I started going afield to do my birding, I noticed on ebird that there were occasional Scissor-tailed Flycatchers being sighted at the Winfred Thomas Agricultural Research Station (Alabama A&M University) in northern Madison County. There were a number of sightings in 2007, occasional sightings in the next few years, then numerous sightings starting about three weeks ago. I’ve driven past the Research Station a few times, but the gate has always been closed, and it didn’t look too inviting as a place to go birding. Most of my trips have been toward the Tennessee River in the opposite direction.

Today, I finally went to the Winfred Thomas Agricultural Research Station and guess what I saw:

Scissor-tailed Flycatchers.

Yes, white birds with a black mask, salmon under the wings, and long tails that open to scissoring forks when the birds fly. I have finally seen my Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, some forty-odd years after I first saw them in a bird book. Everything was just like those pictures, except the tails. Either I saw young birds (which have shorter tails) or the tails aren’t as obviously long in the field as they are drawn in the books.

I think I saw two pairs, but I saw some chasing behavior that might have been territorial, so I can’t be sure. They were in the Research Station on the animal (as opposed to agronomy/horticulture) side, sitting on fences or tall weeds and diving into the grass to catch insects. The tails really do open and close like scissors as the birds maneuver in flight. The tails are long, but not as long as I expected. When I saw the first bird perching, I recognized it by the kingbird profile, white color, and facial mask rather than by the unusually long tail. When I looked more closely, the tail was much longer than is usual for a kingbird, but not to the impressive scale one sees drawn in the various birdbooks. Young birds have shorter tails and it is possible I was seeing a young bird, but I suspect I was mentally adding the length of the long tail to the normal kingbird tail, not to the normal kingbird.