Least Flycatcher

Westdale, Hamilton. ON. May 22 2023.   Why is it that from a feast of drama-queen birds I manage to be captivated by one of the quietist and drabbest?  How come that on a transect walk, ringing with countless orange and black Baltimore Orioles and dozens of bright canary-yellow Yellow Warblers, how come the bird that made me think Wow! is a little Least Flycatcher?

To set the stage, understand that I was doing one of our routine transect hikes. I am part of a team of birders who walk defined routes many times a week, compiling lists and counts of all birds seen and heard. We’re gathering data for Canada’s Royal Botanical Gardens on whose land those routes lie.  Our hikes take us through varied natural habitats full of birds. Now late mid-May and many, perhaps most birds, are migrants who have spent the winter in warmer places and, as if to remind us of their tropical origins, many are raucous, bright and colourful.

This day was cool, not a cloud in the sky, but a buffeting easterly wind made it chilly at times. The wind noise was distracting. I had reached the half-way point in this circuit, a stretch of path where deciduous woodland lays against a municipal playing field. The breeze in the trees made it impossible to spot any conspicuous bird movement but a nearby male Indigo Bunting flew up to a tree top, hopped from spot to spot briefly, grudgingly allowing just me enough time for one photograph. In the bird of the header bar you’ll see the blue brilliance is still emerging from dull brown as his spring moult completes.

And then a small movement and an equally insignificant ‘chip’ note caught my attention. A small something chased another small something and both vanished into cover. Whatever it might be, it was worth watching and waiting for. In time a bird appeared, one of them anyway, it was a Least Flycatcher. That small chip note I’d heard was part of this species’ limited repertoire of a small ‘pwit’ or a bold, territory-claiming ‘ch-beck’. There is not much to write home about Least Flycatchers. But when you see one you usually get several minutes to enjoy it and although small and generally greyish-olive, they have an air of self-confidence, pugnaciousness almost. They are happy to be seen because, after all, presence is some confirmation of ownership, in this case of its little piece of woodland edge. Inexplicably that’s why he was My Bird of the Day.

(Footnote) My Bird of the Day site recently vanished for a week for vague “Server Error’ reasons. They were complex reasons, almost beyond my understanding. I think I was being punished for doing too much of something I don’t think I do at all.  It seems that once or twice a year I spend time grappling with technical terms, much of it in acronyms. Eventually I recover – but one of these days I’m going to throw in the towel. My Bird of the Day has been around for about ten years. It would be a shame to stop what is, in some ways, a personal diary. But really! Scripts, viruses, keyloggers, block widget editors etc etc. There will come a time. PT.