Flying With Scissors The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

There’s a great book called “100 Birds and How They Got Their Names.” I don’t need it today. Although I’ve never seen the bird perched before me, I know exactly what it is and why it’s called a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Tyrannus forficatus).

At the end of a long day touring the Western Everglades, I’m driving a van of tourists back to Fort Myers. My tour narration has ended and most are asleep until I shout “Scissor-tailed Flycatcher!”, make an expert U-turn on a desolate road and park under the telephone wire the bird is perched upon. I’m excited. The guests are excited, but they’re not sure why yet. The salmon-bellied bird with a white-head and long tail feathers looks down at us with ambivalence. He’s perched on a wire just like they are known to do.

Scissor-tails spend most of their year in Texas, Oklahoma (where they’re the state bird) and other plain states, but during the summer most migrate south to Panama. A few end up in Florida and about one hundred were spotted in 2010.

The scissor-shaped tail gives them the ability to make acrobatic maneuvers in flight as they seek out airborne insects. They will go to the ground for grasshoppers and other terrestrial arthropods but this one does an air show for us, grabs a meal and perches on the next wire.

During courtship they can do reverse summersaults and other enticing displays for the female’s approval. Long ago the extended tail feathers may have helped birds of the same species recognize their own, but these days the scissor-shape is a sign of genetic fitness and thus used for mate selection.

One of the tourists is snapping picture after picture and turns to me and says “If the guide is taking pictures, I better take pictures too!”

And she should. It’s an amazing bird.

100 Dead Squirrels

In 1986, I learned as a teenager never to exaggerate anything that can be proven to be untrue. After our home in Venice, Florida escaped the passing of a tropical storm, I investigated the wind and rain damage and infamously reported discovering “100 dead squirrels”. My family was full of fact checkers and when I couldn’t turn up one live squirrel, they decided to torment me for the rest of my life. From that day forward every outlandish statement anyone made was met with “yeah right. And there are 100 dead squirrels.”

When my friend and wildlife scout Milla texted me that she had found 500 Sandhill Cranes in a field in Ortona, FL, I told her to stop licking Cane Toads. She sent a picture and a set of coordinates and offered me the task of checking it out myself.

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) range throughout North America but the Florida Sandhill Crane (G.c. pratensis), which is non-migratory, is considered an endangered subspecies, numbering about 4000 birds. The thin, four foot tall, grayish-brown birds with red caps are not differentiated by physical appearance, but by their migratory behaviors. The northern subspecies arrive in the Sunshine State around October and leave around March, while the Florida subspecies enjoy the rays year round.

Urban development of the prairies and pasturelands of central Florida has led to the decline of the Florida subspecies. On the bright side, the unusually rainy winter of 2010 promises to be a boon for the birds as nest success increases in wet winters.

Although I have seen pairs of Florida Sandhills from time to time, the massive flock of birds that I spotted in the sod farm near Ortona was most certainly a flock of northern “snowbirds”. These sandhills were probably feasting on insects, worms and to the chagrin of the sod farmers, grass seed.