09.14.25: Alder Flycatcher

‍During the last 20 years I’ve been out with my camera several times a week photographing birds and other wildlife. After a couple of decades of watching birds through my viewfinder I’ve become very good at quickly identifying different birds.

‍But there is an exception to that statement. Identifying the variety of birds in the flycatcher family is extremely difficult for me.

‍Many of the species look so similar that it is difficult to tell an Eastern Phoebe from an Eastern Wood-Peewee or a Willow Flycatcher or a Least Flycatcher or a number of others.

‍Sometimes the varieties are so similar that the only way to differentiate them is by their call. That’s definitely the case for the Willow Flycatcher and Alder Flycatcher. They were considered to be the same species until the 1970s.

‍I photographed this bird in a park north of Columbus, Ohio, on an early fall morning. It’s an Alder Flycatcher (that’s my guess and I’m sticking to it … especially after I checked with the online experts at Bird Forum, where most — but not all — said it was an Alder Flycatcher). Like all flycatchers, this bird would perch on a high spot, then suddenly pop into the air, hover, grab a flying insect, then return to the spot.

‍I liked how the bird stood out against the defocused green leaves in the background.

‍Even though Willow and Alder flycatchers look nearly identical, behave the same, sound similar and are found in many of the same areas, the birds themselves aren’t confused by the similarities. Alder and Willow Flycatchers do not respond when they hear each other’s songs. As a matter of fact, scientists used Alder Flycatchers in an experiment in song learning using Willow Flycatchers to tutor young Alders on Willow Flycatcher songs during the chicks first few months of life.  By the next spring, however, the tutored birds sang normal Alder Flycatcher songs instead of the songs they had heard as chicks.

‍The flycatcher family in North America includes a variety of very similar looking birds: phoebes, kingbirds, peewees, kiskadees and more than a dozen types of birds carrying the flycatcher name.