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Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Fork-tailed Flycatcher

Fork-tailed Flycatcher photo by Lillian Stokes, from The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America.

The Fork-tailed Flycatcher that was discovered in Stamford, CT continues there. This amazingly long-tailed, elegant bird from Central and South America, is a rare vagrant to North America and could show up anywhere, but usually has shown up in the East. I photographed the above one that showed up on the NH coast in Nov. 2006. On average, the tail of the female is slightly shorter than that of the male but there is broad overlap. The juv. has a shorter tail than the adult and wing coverts edged cinnamon.
There are two subspecies that occur in North America, "savana (main vagrant to USA from SAM)... and monachus (vag. to TX from Cent. America)" from The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America.
For directions and a photo of the CT bird go here.

2 comments:

cindyzlogic said...

Great capture!! Looks a lot like the Scissor-tailed Flycatchers that we have here in SC Kansas.

Nathan B said...

Awesome capture and bird, you have to love that long tail! Hopefully one day I can see one and get an image half as good as yours ;-) Thanks for all you guys do for the birding community.