Alder and Willow flycatchers, side by side

Back in early June, Shauna and I traveled to rural western New York, to attend the Allegany Nature Pilgrimage. It's quite the event, with hundreds of attendees, scores of field trips and other activities, and lots of speakers. I was there in the latter capacity, speaking about - what else, this year - moths.

The Pilgrimage takes place in a beautiful region with lots of interesting places nearby, so we took the opportunity to tack on a few days and visit some new sites. We saw lots of flora and fauna, managed to eke out some decent imagery, and learned lots about various things. One of the more interesting avian experiences for me was stumbling into a large shrubland that was occupied by both Alder Flycatchers (Empidonax alnorum) and Willow Flycatchers (E. traillii), in about equal numbers.

This vast shrub-dominated meadow is in Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 miles northeast of Buffalo, New York. We were slowly cruising by when I heard the song of an Alder Flycatcher. As this is a species that I am very much smitten with, we quickly pulled over and got out to better assess the situation. To my surprise I soon heard a Willow Flycatcher, then another Alder, another Willow, and so on.

This site is near the southern overlap of these species' ranges, and maybe shrublands full of both species isn't that unusual in this zone, but I had never seen it. Where I live, in central Ohio, Willow Flycatcher is the common species, and Alders only occur sparingly in northernmost Ohio, especially in the northeast corner which has the most boreal-ish habitat. But I've spent scads of time in the north country, such as the northern tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula, where Alder Flycatcher is very common, and I know it well.

Alder and Willow flycatchers were considered conspecific until 1973, although the differences between the two were noticed long before, perhaps most notably by Roger Tory Peterson. Much of the differentiation is in vocalizations, and habitat. They are well-named birds, as Willows typically occupy areas with some willow (genus Salix). Alders prefer, duh, alders (genus Alnus) and thus are typically found in wetter sites as that's where alder thickets thrive. But good luck identifying a silent bird in migration. If it issues a few distinctive call notes, you might nail it, but otherwise it'll have to go down as "Empidonax sp. Even birds in the hand, with measurements possible, cannot always be separated (ever?).

A male Alder Flycatcher in the Iroquois meadow in the first photo. Its singing perch was a willow. Indeed, we could not find any alders in this damp meadow, just willow of several species.

Here is a nearby male Willow Flycatcher, also teed up in a willow singing perch. We walked around much of this roughly 20-acre site and spent much time listening to and watching the flycatchers. In all, we counted 5-6 singing Alders and 4-5 singing Willows. The birds seemed to have marked out well-established territories, and we saw no interactions between the species. It certainly was a great site to hear both of these look-alikes singing side by side.

A brief, greatly compressed video of one of the singing Alder Flycatchers. Sorry, my learning curve with video processing is not very advanced, but you should be able to hear its distinctive song well. It is a burry ascending Free-beer! or Fe-bee-oh!

I was going to post a singing Willow Flycatcher video that was nearby the Alder above, but now my video "editor" is giving me fits and I can't make it work. I'll try to correct this and post it later. Its song is a quite different sneezy Fitz-bew! With some practice and experience, separating these species by song is normally not difficult. Even the call notes are mostly distinctive, especially the dry whit whit calls of Willows and the more robust pip pip notes of Alders. In fact, the latter species reminds me of a miniature Olive-sided Flycatcher as some of its calls suggest that species, and the territorial males seem more pugnacious and prone to singing from exposed perches.

There apparently is no concrete evidence of hybridization between these very similar species, even though they are extremely similar genetically, much more so than most avian species pairings. Our observations in this mixed meadow, the type of site one might think that hybridization might occur if it indeed does happen, indicated that the two species maintained well-defined territories and did not interact much.

Willow Flycatcher in flight

A Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii), post launch. A 1/1000 second shutter speed was not nearly fast enough to freeze its wings as the bird rows hard after launching from a shrub. Warren County, Ohio, August 28, 2022.
 

American Woodcock, and Willow Flycatcher

As this blog's title does have birds in it, and the feathered crowd has been absentee here for some time, I thought it high time to rectify that situation.

Mainly, though, I just wanted to go out and try to photograph (I was going to say "shoot", but I've had people take that the wrong way :-) ) birds. They are still probably my favorite part of the natural world, my entrée into biology, and are almost always challenging and rewarding subjects to photograph.

So, this morning at the crack of dawn, I headed to a nearby metro park, Glacier Ridge, and spent a few hours birding/photographing. This time of year, at least on a clear sunny day like today, it's best to be out REALLY early. By 9 am or so, the light is already getting rather harsh and constrasty.

An American Woodcock, Scolopax minor, poses in a bed of Water-purslane, Ludwigia palustris, in a boggy opening on the edge of a marsh. There were three, a family unit no doubt. And a woodcock that's just sitting and preening - and at close range to boot - is decidedly not a difficult subject to shoot.

This trio is quite tame and utterly unintimidated by the myriad walkers that pass by nearly overhead on an elevated wooden boardwalk. A Virginia Rail was nearby, also at rest, but it was directly in line with the bright sun. I just admired it, rather than take photos that I'd just later delete.

For me, watching birds is as much fun as shooting them. This is undoubtedly due to my history as a hardcore birder LONG before getting serious about trying to capture bird images. I've been watching and learning about birds since I was probably 6-7 years old and for the majority of my life I just watched (and listened). Trying to make serious bird images has increased my knowledge of these subjects tremendously though - especially in regards to behavior. While I've always been more of a watcher than a listing ticker, sitting in one spot sometimes for hours, awaiting a good situation to unfold, forces the observer/photographer to notice in great detail the bird's actions and behavior, as well as that of many other incidental animals.

A Willow Flycatcher, Empidonax traillii, sneezes out its snappy little song while living up to its name. The bird sings from atop a willow, Salix ssp. Until 1973, it was called Traill's Flycatcher, but long before that people had noticed two important things about "Traill's" Flycatcher. There was a distinct partitioning of habitat within the "species", with one group favoring willow-dominated wetlands and low-lying ground, and the other more northerly group inhabiting very wet alder-dominated wetlands. And their songs and calls differed distinctly. Roger Tory Peterson was among those that discerned these differences early on.

In 1973, "Traill's" Flycatcher was split into two species: this one, and the Alder Flycatcher, E. alnorum. While Thomas Traill - a friend of John James Audubon and for whom Audubon named the bird - lost his honorific, the bird was correctly cleaved into two. I've become quite familiar with these species, as I see/hear scores of Willow Flycatchers throughout the Midwest every year. My regular late spring trips to northern Michigan, where Alder Flycatcher rules, have given me a good understanding of that species. In addition to habitat preferences, the songs are quite different. The Willow delivers a sneezy Fitz-BEW! as its primary song. The Alder gives a distinctive Free-beer! with a descending pattern. Once one is familiar with these songs, it's easy to tell them apart. Alder Flycatcher actually reminds me more of a small Olive-sided Flycatcher, and even gives pip-pip call notes similar to that larger species. It also often has richer olive tones reminiscent of the Olive-sided.

PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTE: On this excursion, I took my Canon 400 f/2.8 II (and 5DIV body) as I expected to mostly be working in pretty close range to my subjects. In my backpack were the Canon 1.4x III and 2x III teleconverters. So, in short order I could shoot with a 400mm, 560mm, or 800mm. The Willow Flycatcher was fairly far and atop a 20-foot willow, favoring a singing perch that he constantly returned to. The image above was made using the 2x teleconverter. This lens is one of few that I can consistently get good results with the 2x. It hardly seems to slow focus acquisition, locks on target instantly, and produces a very sharp image. 2x teleconverters cause the loss of two stops, but since the lens is an f/2.8, adding the converter only drops it to an f/5.6 lens. I generally want to shoot birds stopped down to at least f/5.6 anyway, and at smaller apertures if light permits. While adding a 2x teleconverter may seem like a relatively inexpensive way to double the magnification of your lens, I would try one out before buying. I've had unsatisfying results with most lens. This 400mm is the only one I've used where the 2x really shines and I have no qualms about using it with this lens. I also have Canon's neat little 300mm f/4 lens, and the 2x works pretty well on that, but the lens becomes an f/8 minimum aperture, and the teleconverter definitely slows focus on what is already a fairly slow to focus lens. For wildlife photographers able and willing to shell out a chunk of money, I'd highly recommend the 400mm f/2.8 II (I understand the new version III is even better). Because it pairs so well with Canon teleconverters, the lens offers tremendous diversity.