Dozens of bird watchers from across the country have converged on St. Peterburg's Coquina Key to spy a bird that's rare in these parts.
By JEAN HELLER
Published August 4, 2004
[Photo by Lyn Atherton]
The fork-tailed flycatcher is native
to South America.
[Times photo: Jamie Francis]
Carolyn Edmunds, left, and Charles Sample of Venice wait on the south end of Coquina Key for a chance to see a fork-tailed flycatcher, a South American native rarely seen this far north.
ST. PETERSBURG - It is the ultimate snowbird, and news of its presence here rocketed through the bird world.
Birders from as far away as Washington, D.C., Washington state, Michigan, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia and California have converged on St. Petersburg's Coquina Key neighborhood - all for the chance to see a fork-tailed flycatcher.
The geographically challenged bird isn't supposed to get any closer to the United States than Brazil.
But there it was, sitting in the top of a carrotwood tree on Coquina Key, launching itself after passing dragonflies and mosquitoes and diving into the branches to gorge on carrotwood fruit.
A fork-tailed flycatcher is a hard bird to miss.
It has an elegant pronged tail that opens and closes like scissors in flight and an overall length that can reach 16 inches. But it isn't a bird anyone around here ever expects to see. The one that appeared behind the Coquina Key home of Frank O'Sullivan on July 23 was only the 19th ever spotted in Florida.
"Normally, they're one-day wonders, and the first person to see them is the only person who gets the chance," said Lyn Atherton, one of Pinellas County's foremost bird authorities. "There is a record of one that stayed three days, and that was something. This one has been here now for 11 days."
Or maybe it's gone. Nobody is sure. Marjorie Wilkinson of St. Petersburg said the flycatcher was being harassed over the weekend by a Cooper's hawk and might have left.
"Sunday morning was the last morning anybody saw it," Wilkinson said. "It flew out of the carrotwood trees and flew north really fast. But it's flown that way before and come back, so maybe it's still around. Or it might be up around Snell Isle."
The bird drew groups that numbered up to 50 people, crowding in with cars onto the normally quiet neighborhood streets of Coquina Key. The birders said they tried to keep people from parking on Beach Drive, the busiest of the streets.
But when the flycatcher would disappear and turn up elsewhere in the neighborhood, the scramble to catch up with it was described by John Puschock, who drove more than two hours from Eustis, as resembling "the start of the race at Le Mans."
Drew Fulton, 20, of Orlando, a student of environmental studies and photography at Bowdoin College in Maine, drove to Coquina Key to see the flycatcher.
"You just don't get a chance to see one very often," Fulton said. "To be here, it has to be very lost to start with. We think this was a subspecies that really never gets far from Argentina and Brazil."
Wilkinson said there is no way of knowing for sure how the flycatcher got here, but it is a snowbird, migrating north this time of year to get clear of winter in the southern hemisphere.
Joyce King of the Audubon Society of St. Petersburg said the species is sensitive to weather and winds and might have overshot its destination during migration.
"Birds, and especially young ones, can get caught up in the winds and wind up going where the winds take them," King said.
And how will it get home again?
"We don't know if they ever get back," Atherton said. "Or maybe that's what it was doing at Coquina Key, fattening up on insects and berries for the eventual flight home."
FORK-TAILED FLYCATCHER
APPEARANCE: The bird's distinguishing physical attribute is its long, scissor-like tail, which opens and closes in flight. Depending on male or female, mature or juvenile, it ranges from 10 to 16 inches long, has a black cap (it is sometimes possible to see a yellow stripe on the crown), a white neck and breast, gray shoulders and a black back and tail.
VOICE: A buzzy chattering song; call note is a sharp "sick" or "plik."
HABITAT: Savannas, open scrubby habitat; usually found on or near the ground; U.S. vagrants typically found in coastal scrub and fields.
RANGE: Southern Mexico to Argentina, usually east of the Andes mountains. It is migratory over most of its range and occasionally strays to the eastern U.S. seaboard.
FOOD: Fruit and berries as well as insects.
Source: The Sibley Guide to Birds; U.S. Geological Survey
