The Alder Flycatcher

Yesterday, as I was sitting on the west side of our pond waiting for the birds to settle after my entrance, I was running the Merlin bird ID app.

I looked down at my phone and saw an orange dot next to a bird that Merlin “heard” and identified. Orange means unlikely to be in my area at that time. The bird was an Alder Flycatcher.

Alder Flycatchers were once considered the same as Willow Flycatchers. However, their songs are distinct, so while they look quite similar (or nearly indistinguishable), they have since been determined to be two distinct species.

Therefore, logic might suggest that it’s better to get an audio recording to determine Willow versus Alder, than photo evidence.

All that analysis wasn’t actually in my brain when I saw the orange dot next to the bird as I was scanning for bird movement in the brushy environment at our pond, hoping to get a good photo of, well, anything.

I have also learned that Merlin can “hear” something that sounds like a species, and it turns out to be an incorrect assessment. For example, Merlin identified a Great Egret (which, to be fair, I have filmed at our pond in the past) however, it was winter. Great Egrets are not likely to be in our location at that time of year. So, I listened to the call that the Great Egret makes, and it sounded surprisingly similar to the sound that my tripod makes as I move it across the nubby, rubber floor of my golf cart (in which I sit while filming) !!!!B

Back to the Alder Flycatcher: when I saw the identification in Merlin, I clicked on the bird in order to listen to its call. The Northern Mockingbirds were being very vocal, yesterday, and sometimes they mimic a bird sound that they picked up elsewhere. I hear them often calling the sounds of Phoebes.

I played the sound of the Alder Flycatcher and thought it could have been something I heard in all the birdsong that was happening. It wasn’t something totally strange like the Great Egret belching sound.

Less than a minute after playing the song, I saw a bird land on a dead branch not more than 60 feet away. “Stay there little bird,” I wished to myself.

I was able to snap a few photos and it flew off.

When I got back to the office and downloaded the raw files from my camera, I quickly scanned through them. Oh! There’s that bird that landed on that dead branch! It looks like a flycatcher of some sort, I thought.

I had heard Great Crested Flycatchers calling in a few locations when I was out filming, and I thought maybe that was it. Although there wasn’t the typical crest nor a yellowish color on the breast area.

So, I took a photo of the photo that was open on my computer monitor so that I could get the image into Merlin quickly.

Merlin called it an Alder Flycatcher.

Here’s the bird.

I’m going to call this an Alder Flycatcher based on the double identification offered by the Merlin app.