Scissor-tailed flycatchers migrate south for the winter

For years I saw what looked like a pair of scissor-tailed flycatchers, swooping off the utility wire when I would drive out of our driveway. When I was back from whatever errand, the flycatchers were usually elsewhere.

It was one of those things where I’d always have a photo opportunity because they were always there. And then, they weren’t. In retrospect, their continued absence may have coincided with a bizarre windstorm a couple of years ago that took out the big sugar hackberry and mesquite trees that marked our property along the road, across from the bird’s dependable dining lookout.

Fast forward to the present. I was working in the yard near the road recently and spied my two long lost feathered friends. Without hesitation, I abandoned my project, zipped down our long driveway to the house and returned with my camera and longest lens. I sat just inside the gate, delicately raised the camera, to avoid sun-flashing the birds, warning them they were being watched. I enjoyed the show, finally getting the coveted photographs.

After ensuring their identification and researching the species, I found that scissor-tailed flycatchers are summer residents in the Rio Grande Valley — if the tree situation suits them — as apparently it did, prior to the big tree-eradicating wind. Hackberry trees are thought to attract scissor-tailed flycatchers, as are mulberry trees, where they can supplement their diet with berries.

Scissor-tailed flycatchers breed from southern Nebraska south to Texas and just over the border into far northeastern Mexico. Fortunately, I did not disregard this new-found opportunity to watch and photograph the pair because the next day, they were gone. In discussions with a birding expert, I learned that scissor-tailed flycatchers migrate –not to Texas as so many birds do this time of year, but south, wintering in southern Mexico and Central America.

Identifying this species is quick, even to a novice. The bird’s long tail is its most obvious tell, it reaches twice the length of its body and is deeply forked. In flight, they can open and close the tail feathers like scissors. Males have longer tail feathers than females.

The birds are pale gray with black wings with white edges. When light catches their underparts from a certain angle and in flight, a brilliant salmon orange-pink color is revealed on their flanks and underwing patches. The female’s colors are less intense than the males.

Scissor-tailed flycatchers are insectivorous and put on quite a show capturing their prey. They perch on utility lines, poles, tree branches or fences to watch. They eat grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, wasps, bees, true bugs, flies, caterpillars and moths. From their perch, they will jaunt out and snatch insects from the air, returning to a perch between insect-hunting flights.

In flight, scissor-tailed flycatchers fly in straight lines with fast wingbeats, tail folded straight and slender. While hawking insects, they are agile and highly maneuverable. Their unusually long tail adds to their acrobatic ability and helps them make abrupt turns midair. They also can hover briefly, tail spread, and pluck food from vegetation.

Pairs are monogamous during the breeding season, but don’t always reunite in subsequent years. A description of the male’s courtship ritual is quite intriguing. Called a sky dance, the bird flies straight up to about a hundred feet then plunges downward, exhibiting a zigzag pattern, then quickly flies upward again, only to dip and fall, ending the exhibition with two or three backward somersaults.

Mark your calendars for late February for when these flying acrobats begin returning to south Texas and begin showing off their mate-attracting skills. Keep your camera handy.

The following sources were helpful in writing this story; Alsop III, Fred J., 2002, “Birds of Texas,” DK Smithsonian Handbooks, New York; Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Texas Breeding Bird Atlas; allaboutbirds.org; Audubon.org; softschools.com/facts; abcbirds.org; and tpwd.texas.gov.

Anita Westervelt is a Texas Master Naturalist.

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