26May 2014. Cayuga ON. Bird of the Day presented a dilemma that really should not have been too difficult to deal with. Which is it: Canada Warbler or Willow Flycatcher? One a dude, a toff, a popinjay who arrives for the party with his precise charcoal grey cape slung over a buttercup yellow vest, the ensemble set off to perfection by a cascade of black pearls and custom white-rimmed spectacles. The other a workhouse drudge found where it’s wet underfoot and mosquitoes abound, it dresses in army drab and eats flies; there’s little more to be said.
Of course I encountered both of them today, the Canada Warbler was trapped in a mist net and brought to the lab for banding, the Willow Flycatcher was somewhere close to the riverside trail singing its heart out. I prefer my birds unfettered; a Canada Warbler is a truly spectacular bird but it loses points for being briefly captive, the Willow Flycatcher is just a symbol of wetlands and its song sets it apart from its lookalike cousins the Least and Alder Flycatchers.
A little bit like vireos, which I enjoy for their often-unremarkable dress and pugnacious attitude, I find flycatchers engaging, the smaller ones you might call perky while the bigger ones tend to be noisily assertive. Here’s a gallery of some of the members of this family (not all of them seen in Ontario); you’ll note they’re not all dressed like workhouse drudges.
