This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the ash-throated flycatcher.
The family of birds whose members are known as tyrant flycatchers, and which includes the ash-throated, is large and diverse. Almost every type of land habitat in North and South America is occupied by one or more of the 400-plus species that make up this group.
The ash-throated flycatcher is a bird of dry places, so well adapted to this niche that it doesn’t need to drink water. The amount that it gets from the food it eats suffices. During breeding season it is found in western states in dry scrub, oak, juniper and pinyon forests, and open woodlands up to 9000 feet elevation.
The ash-throated is a long and slender flycatcher, grayish-brown with a pale yellow belly and peaked head. Cinnamon colors are found on the wings and on the underside of the tail. The head and face is ashy gray, which blends to a whitish neck and gives the bird its name.
This is not a bird that will show up at your feeder. It dines on spiders and insects including wasps, bees, bugs, moths, caterpillars, flies and more. In season it will also eat some small fruits. While many of the woodland flycatchers that we see hunt by flying out to catch prey midair, this is not typically the ash-throated’s style. Instead, most often it forages in the lower levels of trees and shrubs, scanning the leaves and twigs for prey.
A secondary cavity nester, the ash-throated seeks abandoned woodpecker holes or natural tree cavities to build its nest and is fiercely possessive of these limited sites. To its advantage, it has also adapted to utilize man-made cavities including nest boxes, and has been found nesting in unusual places including pipes, fence posts and even inside laundry hanging on a clothesline. This flexibility has balanced the losses of natural nest sites and contributed to the ash-throated flycatcher expanding its range.
By mid-September, ash-throated flycatchers will have departed most of the United States to spend the winter in Mexico and in parts of Central America.
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Photo courtesy Charles Martinez