[birding] Hammond's !?

[M & R Campbell]

The several, recent reports of Hammond's Flycatchers in the mid-valley caught my interest, had my envy, and made me a little suspicious--since I can hardly make the call on a Hammond's, much less find one in my backyard.  Yesterday evening, though, I found an empid in our willows with a distinct eye-ring that just wasn't big or bold enough to make it a Pacific-Slope.  The bird gave me plenty of looks--as flycatchers often do--to see a deeply notched tail, long primary projection, wingtips extending almost 1/4 of the length of the tail beyond the undertail coverts, and a dark lower mandible that was orange-ish only at the very base.  I even had time to walk up to the house, peruse some guides, and find the bird again.  The only nagging problem was the relative size to the bill, which didn't look "tiny" to me.  But it didn't look big enough to belong to a Western Flycatcher, either.  Finally, I decided that the bill on that bird could only look large to someone looking straight up at it through binoculars from ten feet away.  So, I'm adding HAMMOND'S FLYCATCHER to my yard list.  I hope all other empid identifiers will share my self-congratulations, as well as my nagging sense of unease.

Also, six LEAST SANDPIPERS have visited our gravel beach by the river these last two days .  They're hard to make out, too, since from more than thirty feet away they look just like little, moving, river rocks.


Every bird mentioned in this post was found without the use of a bike.


Randy in Peoria


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