Our Bird Comrades

by Leander S. Keyser

One day a friend and I were driving along a country road over the prairie, when a quaint bird form went swinging from the wire fence by the roadside toward a clump of willows in a shallow dip of the prairie. Dashing after him, I heard a clear, musical call that proclaimed a bird with which I had not yet become acquainted.

In a few moments he flew from the tree. My binocular was fixed upon him as he went flitting across the field and presently alighted on the ground. My surmise was correct; it was the scissorstail flycatcher, one of the most unique and handsome birds belonging to our American avifauna, one that merits more than a passing notice. To see him perched on a fence, or swinging gracefully through the air, and hear his bell-like calls and whistles makes you feel as if you were suddenly transported to a foreign land, like Australia or Borneo, where so many feathered curios are to be found.

In a fever of excitement I followed the bird, which presently flew back to the fence by the roadside. He flitted from point to point as my friend and I slowly pursued him, giving us an exhibition of his scissoring process. Sometimes he would alight on a post, then on the barbed wire, usually sitting flat on his breast. When open, the tail is bicolored, the outer border all around being white and the inner black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly seen when it was extended. An orange or scarlet gem adorns the crown, but is so well hidden by the other crest feathers that it is seldom noticed.

My friend and I were privileged to witness a rare and attractive scissorstail show, more gratifying than any circus performance. A loggerhead shrike suddenly appeared on the scene, and made an assault on the flycatcher. The two birds went gyrating, zigzagging, see-sawing through the air in a perfect jumble of white and black and ash. It must be remembered that the shrike himself makes a handsome picture on the wing, and when you come to mix up a scissorstail and a shrike in inextricable confusion, you have a feathery display worth seeing.

Nor was that the end of the exhibition, for in a moment a second scissorstail, the precise facsimile of the first, appeared from somewhere, and the two flycatchers combined against their enemy. Then for a few minutes there was such a chaos of shrike and scissorstail that we could scarcely tell which was which. By and by the shrike wheeled away, when, as if to bring the gladiatorial show to a climax, the scissorstails engaged in a set-to that was really wonderful, coming together in the air, whirling around and around, rising in a spiral course, opening and closing their beautiful forked tails in quick succession, the black and white trimmings flashing momentarily, then disappearing, until the contestants finally descended, parted in the most graceful manner, and alighted on separate fence posts, none the worse for their melee.

In the evening I returned to the enchanted spot, but the scissorstails had disappeared. Not having had my fill of these charmers, I stopped, on my return home, for a day at Wellington, Kansas, where I was so fortunate as to find three birds of this species, who permitted me to watch them to my heart's content. They are not shy birds, but fly in a graceful, leisurely way from post to post along the fence as you walk or drive, sometimes sitting quietly to let you pass by. In this respect their habits are much like those of their cousin, the kingbird.

As his name indicates, our bird is the proud possessor of a genuine scissorstail, composed of two long, slender prongs that are spread far apart under certain conditions of flight. Let me describe the process minutely, for it is unique here in North America where fork-tailed birds are rare.

When the bird starts up from a perch, he spreads apart the prongs of his tail for a moment, as if to give himself a spring; then he closes them in a single slender stem, tapering outward to a point, keeping them closed during prolonged flight, and just as he sweeps down to another perch, he opens his ornamental scissors again, shutting them up as soon as he has settled upon his resting place. He does not open and close his tail at regular intervals during flight, as might be supposed, but keeps it closed until he descends to a perch, when it is opened for a moment in the act of alighting. However, if he has occasion to wheel or make a sudden turn in the air, either for an insect or in a playful prank, his scissors fly open, one might almost say spontaneously, no doubt serving the double purpose of rudder and balancing pole. When closed, the tail is very narrow, looking almost like a single plume. On the perch (except when he desires to shift his position, when he also makes use of his wings) his tail is closed. Therefore the picture of this bird in Dr. Coues's "Key to North American Birds" is not accurate, for it represents our bird in the sitting posture with the tines of his fork spread apart. If the wings were outstretched, representing the bird in the act of alighting or shifting his position, the picture would be true to scissorstail life.

The range of these birds is somewhat restricted, and for that reason, doubtless, so little is known about their habits. According to Ridgway, their proper home is in eastern Mexico and the southwestern prairie districts of the United States, though many of them come north as far as southern Kansas and southwestern Missouri to spend the summer and rear their families. In winter they go as far south as Costa Rico. Restricted as their habitat is, it is curious to note that they are "accidental" in a few unexpected places, such as Key West, Fla., Norfolk, Va., and also in several localities in New England, Manitoba, and Hudson Bay Territory. Prof. W. W. Cooke, of Colorado, says they are "rare, if not accidental," in that state. To show that our birds are unique, it is relevant to say that there are only two species of scissors-tailed flycatchers in North America, which have the genus Milvulus all to themselves. The other member of the genus is the forked-tailed flycatcher (Milvulus tyrannus), a resident of tropical America, migrating north normally as far as southern Mexico. He is a sort of southern twin of our scissorstail.

The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the neighborhood of country homes on the prairie. Considering the size of the birds, their nests are quite small, not so large as those of the brown thrashers, though the cup is deeper and the architecture more compact and elaborate. A friend describes a nest which he found on a locust tree about sixteen feet from the ground. It was made mostly of dry grass and locust blossoms, with here and there a piece of twine braided into the structure. It had no special lining, but the grass was more evenly woven on the inside of the cup than elsewhere.