Yesterday I received an email from Yvette Berisford of Athens, about a possible pair of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers on her friend’s farm in Madison County. (Steve Holzman forwarded me her original message about the birds.) I was able to get more information from Yvette about the site and spoke with the landowners on the phone to arrange a visit. Carole Ludwig and I drove out there yesterday around 6pm. We met the landowner, Rachel Coker, and she graciously took us out to where she and her husband Randolph had seen the birds, in their pasture across the road from their house.

We quickly found both a female and male Scissor-tailed Flycatcher perched about 100 feet apart on a barbed wire fence running between two pastures. Looking between the birds into the next field across the fence, we noticed a very large isolated sweetgum tree with two main trunks. As I was trying to get a few digital photos through the scope, the male flew away back towards the house. Suddenly the female starting making a harsh calling noise, and the male made a U-turn and came back towards the sweetgum. We saw both birds fly to the tree and perch close together high up and thought, could there be a nest? Soon the male flew away and the female dropped lower in the tree. Sure enough, after a bit of scanning the branches, we found a large nest of sticks, hay strings, and other debris about 10-15 feet down from the top of the right main trunk.

We studied the nest for a while and finally could see the bright white head of the female only occasionally pop up into view. I took a few pictures of the nest, but wasn’t able to get any that show the female on the nest; for the most part she stayed low out of view. I did get a couple nice shots of the male on a nearby pecan tree up closer to the house.

We also saw the male hawking insects from a pecan tree behind the red-roofed house opposite the Coker’s driveway.

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