09/02/2016 Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are on the move

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher 02 - Robert Benson Photo

This juvenile scissortail is only a couple of weeks out of its nest. His tail has yet to grow long and the soft gray of his back has a brownish cast. Scissortails young and old are gathering together right now as they prepare to head south for a short four months in the tropics. Robert Benson photo.

02 Sep 2016 – Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are on the Move

I counted 13 scissortails along a two-mile stretch of County Road 104 this morning.  They were all on the barbed wire fences that delineated the hayfields and pastures.  This stretch of road runs east-west and the scissortails were all on one side of the road, facing south!   I couldn’t believe that there were so many of these grand flycatchers in such a short distance.  I turned around and drove back the way I had come, re-counting the birds.  Sure enough – thirteen!

Scissortails are fond of open fields, pastures and parks.  Any semi-open area in the brush country will have a scissortail or two.  They often sit on power lines and fences (seemingly unafraid of people), so you can get a good look even without binoculars.

Besides being easy to see, these flying acrobats are very nice to look at.   Their crisp black-and-white tails and wings, and soft gray upperparts give them an elegant presence.  The salmon color lining their wings and the sides of the bellies accents their good looks.  Bright orange-red patches on the sides of their breasts are striking, too, especially on the males.

Females are similar to males but their colors are duller.  The easiest way to tell the difference between males and females is by the length of their tails.  Females’ tails are (approximately) one third shorter than the males’.  This tail-length difference is obvious when a pair of birds sits together on a wire.

Why the long tails anyway?  Observers say that the extra length in the tails gives these birds more maneuverability as they catch insects in mid-air.  If you watch their acrobatic flights, you will soon conclude that this is true.  They also perform amazing aerial courtship displays.  Those long tails make for a spectacular show!

The male scissortail starts his sky dance by flying upward as much as 100 feet, then plunges downward about a fourth of the distance at which point he turns sharply upward again.  His tail feathers “open and shut like scissors” to help with these turns.   He repeats this up and down zigzag path several times all the while emitting a high-pitched cackling.  In the last descent, he may even perform two or three backward somersaults!

This display thrills the female.  His vigorous but graceful ballet shows her how fit he is.  His maneuvers indicate what a good provider (of insects) he will be to their family.  Females find the male with the longest tail very attractive.  To female scissortails, length matters!  They almost always choose a mate based on the extent of his tail.

However, I noticed that the scissortails I saw on the fence wires today had very short tails.  At first glance, they could have been mistaken for mockingbirds.  I think most of these scissortails were young birds.  They are just a week or two off the nest and haven’t had time to grow full, adult-length, tail feathers.

It is also possible that some of these birds are adults who have just undergone their complete post-nuptial molt.  During this molt, the birds gradually replace all their worn feathers with spanking new ones.  This also readies them for the migration to southern Mexico and Central America.

Scissor-tailed Flycatchers stay in Texas for a long time.  They arrive in mid-March and usually are still here in some numbers in late October.  This means they are here for eight months and gone for only four.  Many other migratory birds arrive on their breeding grounds in May or June and then leave as early as August:  those species have only a three-month season here in North America.

If you are an early riser, you can hear the scissortails’ dawn song.  They sing it during the breeding season, and perform near an active nest.  At first light (30 minutes before sunrise) the birds utter a series of loud, stuttering pup-pup-pups ending with an emphatic perleep or peroo.  This dawn song can go on for 10 minutes or more!

Scissortails are great insect eaters.  A study of the species done in 1912 by Professor F. E. L. Beal found that over 96% of their diet is animal food, chiefly beetles, bugs, grasshoppers and crickets.  Oddly, this “flycatcher” cares little for flies!   Fortunately, less than 1% of the insects eaten are beneficial species.  Beal states:  “It needs but little study of the food of the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher to show that where the bird is abundant it is of much economic value.  Its consumption of grasshoppers is alone sufficient to entitle this bird to complete protection.”

The insectivorous nature of scissortails makes them welcomed by farmers and ranchers.   We country folk also admire the way they drive away hawks from the vicinity of their nests.   Mrs. Florence Bailey in 1902 described a particularly protective scissortail “in pursuit of an innocent caracara who was accidentally passing through the neighborhood.  The slow ungainly caracara was no match for the swift-winged flycatcher… (who) pounced down upon him and rode the hawk till they were out of sight.”

In late August, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers begin to join up in flocks of 50 or more individuals at night.  These communal roosts may occur in the same tree year after year.  The roosts are quite noisy at dusk, but once the birds have settled down, they are quiet until the next morning.  No one really understands why scissortails form communal roosts.  Perhaps they are discussing their travel plans for the fall migration.

Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are one of our favorite and most recognizable birds.  They are beautiful, elegant, fun to watch, and economically important.  They occur only in Texas and surrounding states.  Maybe we should have designated the scissortail as our State Bird!

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