Get to know our summer flycatchers

This spring and summer, I’ve been exploring many of the migratory birds that visit us during the nesting season, including the swallows, our summer warblers and three diverse members of the cardinal family. But there are yet more summer travelers to meet. Today we have the flycatchers, an enormous family of more than 400 species found across the Americas, but one which is often overlooked by more casual observers of our local birdlife.

First, a little clearing up of terminology is in order. When I speak of the flycatcher “family,” I am referring to the branch of the avian evolutionary tree known as the Tyrannidae, not all of which are commonly known as flycatchers; the group includes, for instance, phoebes and kingbirds. “Flycatching” refers to catching flying insects on the wing in short, directed sallies, the characteristic hunting style for all our local members of the formal family.

First up is the most well-known: the black phoebe. This is the only one of our flycatchers that is truly common in suburban parks and yards. And they are the easiest to recognize, sparrow-sized birds with an unmistakable color palette of all black above — including the wings, head and even the eyes — and starkly white on the belly. They are named for their simple “song,” a quick and piercing sequence of a higher and a lower whistle, that more precisely sounds something like “tee-hee.”

Black phoebes are happy to move in to areas of human habitation and are frequently seen hunting from perches near lawns. While they commonly nest near natural waterways, they can also use our garden irrigation to generate enough mud for their nests, leading them to frequently place their nests of mud and assorted plant material under the eaves of buildings. Black phoebes are present and common in Marin all year round, while a less common member of the genus, the peachy-bellied Say’s phoebe, is found in grasslands and open woodlands during the winter months.

But the resident black phoebe and winter Say’s phoebe are exceptional — the rest of our flycatchers are here just for the spring and summer nesting season. Two are relatively easy to see in appropriate natural habitat: the ash-throated flycatcher and western kingbird. The ash-throated flycatcher, despite its name, is actually most easily recognized by the elegant copper color in its wings and especially tail. This is often subtle on perched birds, which will appear mostly light gray on the front and brown on the back, but gleams beautifully when the sun shines through it. They also have an endearingly explosive call (ker-BRICK!) that rings out from local woodlands sounding rather like a squeaky stuffed animal I had as a child.

Western kingbirds are our local representatives of the genus that gives its name to the whole family, the Tyrannus of the Tyrannidae, the tyrants of the avian world, so named because of the highly aggressive way in which they defend their territories against other songbirds, larger raptors, or even pets, livestock or humans. (So the story goes — I’ve never been attacked by one, so I think you can pursue your flycatcher observations without fear.) Western kingbirds have bright yellow bellies and are the largest of our local flycatchers, about the size of a robin. They tend to prefer more open woodlands or oak savannas, while ash-throats are more common in continuous oak woodland: Visit Novato’s Mount Burdell or Stafford Lake to see both.

Our remaining species are much harder for the casual observer to spot: the western flycatcher (known until recently as the Pacific-slope flycatcher), western wood-pewee and olive-sided flycatcher. All are comparatively plain, none is particularly large, the first two hide in the canopy and the third is the least common. But what they do share are distinctive voices. Western flycatchers very frequently call with high, upturned whistles in woods and forests, wood-pewees perform their loud namesake calls (often slurred and compressed into more of a monosyllable than you might expect —“pweeee!”) and olive-sided flycatchers have a vocalization that for somewhat obscure reasons has garnered the now traditional mnemonic phrase of “Quick! THREE beers!” I can’t really explain this one, but now you’ll know it when you hear it.

Jack Gedney’s On the Wing runs every other Monday. He is a co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato and author of “The Private Lives of Public Birds.” You can reach him at jack@natureinnovato.com.