• Bruce Glick: Gone Birding

A tropical kingbird stops in on a snowy November day

• Bruce Glick: Gone Birding
• November 24, 2019
• 1745

One of the unusual birds that birders look for in Southern Arizona is the tropical kingbird. The same would be true for extreme Southern Texas or parts of Southern Florida. This tropical flycatcher is easily found south of the border, from Mexico through Central America and on through South America to Central Argentina.

Four similar kingbirds are found in the Southwestern United States. Most widespread is the western kingbird, a species found in most of the western half of the country. Western kingbirds sometimes show up further east including sightings in Ohio and Indiana.

A second similar bird is Cassin’s kingbird, found in the southwest and up through Colorado. The third is Couch’s kingbird, a species that is restricted to Southern Texas and at times east along the Gulf Coast. It is not known to wander far from home.

The fourth of these similar gray and yellow flycatchers is the tropical kingbird. As mentioned above, it normally barely reaches the U.S. border. However, unlike Couch’s and Cassin’s, tropical kingbirds often are found as vagrants far from their normal range. Looking at records on e-Bird, I was amazed to find tropical kingbird appearances all along the eastern seaboard, up into New Brunswick and Quebec. There also have been a few records in Ontario, Minnesota and Southern Illinois.

Tropical kingbirds also show up all along the Pacific Coast, north to British Colombia and even once at Juneau, Alaska.

There doesn’t appear to be any records for Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. Even states close to Arizona such as New Mexico have very few tropical kingbird records. Birders in Ohio who realize tropical kingbirds have been seen as close as the north shore of Lake Erie in Ontario have been on the lookout for one to show up in the Buckeye State.

That happened on Wednesday, Nov. 13 when Ray Hannikmann was making his daily birding walk through the woodland paths at Mentor Lagoons Preserve. Ray has been birding this area for many years, and he quickly knew he was seeing a tropical kingbird, a new bird for the area and for the state.

Ray told me he had forgotten his phone that morning and had to walk back to the parking lot, where he found someone to help get the word out and to take photos. The day was snowy, and temperatures were dropping. Birders who arrived later that day were worried the kingbird would not survive the night. On Thursday the weather improved, and the bird was active and seemed to be doing OK.

I had been in touch with several birding friends on Thursday and decided to make the trip the next day. Finding it hard to sleep, I left my place in Goshen, Indiana at 3 a.m., arriving at Mentor Lagoons at 7:30 a.m. There were three other birders there, and we all walked out to the salamander trail, where we met another birder who had already seen the bird.

Ray soon arrived and showed us where he had seen the kingbird over the last two days. Suddenly the bird was calling overhead, not far from where we were standing. Over the next hour we watched as it ate berries and flew around the area. At times it would disappear, only to show up before long in the same area.

Although I had seen countless tropical kingbirds when we lived in Latin America, it was very special to hear and see this bird in Northern Ohio. I sincerely hope it has since headed south to warmer conditions, but I’m glad it survived the worst of the cold and snow while in Ohio.

Good birding.

Bruce Glick can be emailed at bglick2@gmail.com.