May 9 Report by Dan Jones:
John Brush's Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher was easy to see this morning from
10:20-10:50 AM at Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen. Walk through the entrance
and go uphill to the trail with "The Amazing World of Birds" sign.
Continue up the hill a short distance to the yellow blooming Tecoma and
turn around. The bird would perch in the hackberry next to the tall dead
palm behind the cactus garden. Several times it was seen entering a hole
on the palm with nesting material. It called the "sqeaky toy" call several
times. The bird was not seen between 11:15 and 11:45 AM.
The dark throat and call rules out the "hoped for" Streaked Flycatcher.
Photos:
May 10 Notes by Rex Stanford
FINDING THE BIRD: Dan Jones's instructions on finding it were precisely on
the button. Go up the entry road and past the sign, on your left, that says
"The Amazing World of Birds." Proceed just a bit until you come to the
junction with the road that loops around the front of the mansion. In front
of you, at this point, will be a Tecoma tree with some yellow blooms.
Standing in front of that tree, just turn around, as Dan said. On the right
side of the entry road, behind a cactus garden, you will see a very tall,
very slender, trunk of a dead palm. It has more than one hole in it. A
hackberry tree extends up in front of that trunk, and it is in this
hackberry that the flycatcher often sits. A favorite perch is near the top
of a branch of that tree that is to the right of the palm trunk; another
favorite perch is the high point on the same tree, but to the left of the
trunk.
At times the flycatcher flew up and over the hackberry, moving westward,
toward the back of the tree, out of sight. Shortly before we left, we saw
it make an excursion to a tree south of the aforementioned road junction, a
bit up the "loop" road in front of the mansion, on the south side of the
road. It had become rather hot, and this time it stopped within the
branches, in a well-shaded spot, still visible from the loop road. After a
few minutes, it took flight and moved up, over the top of that tree and
seemed to head to some spot in a tree that was to the south of that
location.
If you go for this bird, patience in watching the hackberry in front of and
to the left and right of the tall, slender, dead palm trunk appears to pay
off.
BEHAVIOR OBSERVATIONS: When we first arrived at this site, the flycatcher,
which had been perched prominently up on a hackberry branch to the left of
the trunk, moved onto the trunk and partially entered one of the holes in
it. I am unsure whether it had anything in its beak at that point, but it
exhibited a definite interest in the hole. Early in our visit, the
flycatcher did vocalize once, and that, in fact, is what drew my attention
to the hackberry, where I then saw it perched.
