At 4 PM on September 8th several photos of a flycatcher at the Biltmore Estate were posted on the local Blue Ridge Birders text group. The bird was bright yellow below, and the initial posted ID was of a Great Crested Flycatcher. But several group members (including me) thought it was a Western Kingbird. That’s a great bird for the area, and it would be a new Buncombe County bird for me, but not a new NC statebird. And since the bird was actually photographed in the morning, many hours earlier, the chances of it still being around were likely pretty low. So I decided to not chase after it. Though when the Kingbird was re-spotted at 5 PM I started to second guess my decision to stay home.
And then at 6 PM came a post with a photo of a Say’s Phoebe
in the same area as the Kingbird sightings.
That’s an amazing pair of rarities to be in one area! And the Say’s would be a new NC statebird for
me. So minutes later I was out of the
house to head to Biltmore to give them both a try. The chase was on.
As I was driving into town several texts were posted
questioning the initial Western Kingbird ID.
Could there indeed be 2 rare western flycatchers in the same area, or
were the initial photos showing a Say’s Phoebe after all? The belly sure looked to be bright yellow in
those photos. Or could the yellow color
be somehow associated with processing the original pictures? Then while sitting at a red light I noticed
that the original post had 3 pictures showing a bird with a yellow belly, but a
fourth picture showed a bird with bit of a rusty color below. Hmm…
I finally arrived at Biltmore at about 6:45, and went right
to the field south of the Lagoon where the bird(s) was(were) being seen. There were nearly a dozen other birders there
who had seen the Say’s just minutes earlier.
And now with no new Kingbird sightings, the general thought was that the
bird was a Say’s all along. In the waning light I scanned
the field and fencing where the Phoebe had been seen but only found an Eastern
Phoebe.
I was told the target bird was generally working its way to
the south so I focused on the field and fencing up ahead in that
direction. I scanned the area for at
least 5 minutes with no sightings. Was
it now too late in the evening for this insect-eater to still be foraging for
food? Was I going to be the first person
to not see the bird? And then I heard a
birder behind me say he had the target bird.
I turned around and there was the Say’s Phoebe perched on the fence just
to the north. The pressure was off… We watched for several minutes at it fed from
its perch on the fence, and then from corn stubble in the adjacent field where
I got this phonescoped photo.
Needless to say it was never yellow below. Who knows what went wrong in those initial photos. And upon closer review, the structure of the bird was more like a Phoebe than a Kingbird. In any case, I’ll take a Say’s Phoebe over a Western Kingbird any day.
That was my 4th try for Say’s Phoebe in NC. I tried twice for a long-staying Say’s in the
winter of 2021-22 in Guilford County.
And then I tried for one in September 2023 at nearby Jackson Park. I guess the 4th time was the charm.
Say’s Phoebe was #329 for my NC state list. In my state bird map below, the light
blue-shaded states are those where I’ve seen Say’s Phoebe in its regular
range. The 6 dark blue states are those
where I’ve seen this species as a rarity.
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