My “Bucket List” is One: Variegated Flycatcher

If you spend much time around birders, our conversations will eventually come around to a discussion or comparison of lists. These lists can have either spatial and temporal constraints, sometimes both. We keep world lists, continent lists, country lists, state lists, county lists, yard lists, year lists, month lists, and day lists. The most afflicted among us start all over each January 1st and spend the next 365 days keeping county and statewide year lists.

I’ve even heard tales of birders keeping event lists. My favorite event list story involved the outdoor wedding of two birders. Of course many of the attendees of these nuptials were also birders (listers). Most of you probably already suspect that they kept a list of all species of birds that were seen during the wedding and the reception. They did. Rumor has it that some shocking rarities were reported during the latter portions of the reception. Apparently, performance-enhancing libations were involved.

I am by no means immune to this listing bug. I keep lists for three of the four states that I’ve resided in. Unfortunately, I moved away from Pennsylvania (at 1.5 years of age) when I was still in my rather brief pre-birding phase of life. I maintain lists for all of Oregon’s 36 counties, plus a few counties in Indiana and Illinois where I haven’t lived, or even visited, since 1998. The last time I checked the county listing results for Illinois, I was still the top lister for Edgar County, which borders Indiana in east-central Illinois. Those of you curious enough to read the “about us” bios have already learned that I hold the county year listing record for Oregon. “Mr. Irons, please put down the pencil and step away from the checklist…slowly.”

Among all these lists, the shortest is my Bucket List. This is not the type of bucket list that Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman were ticking off in the popular movie of the same name. This is the list of birds that I’ve actually seen on a bucket.

This Variegated Flycatcher was many thousands of miles out of range when it was discovered at Windust Park, Franklin County, Washington. Collectively, the group of birders present took about 1000 pictures while it sat on this plastic bucket on 7 September 2008.

The only species of bird that I’ve actually seen on a bucket is Variegated Flycatcher. Crazier still, this Variegated Flycatcher was sitting on a bucket at Windust Park in Franklin County, Washington, about 6000 miles from its home range in South America. Mike and Merry Lynn Denny discovered this bird late in the day on 6 September 2008. Now I don’t normally think of myself as lucky, but on this weekend good fortune smiled upon me. Steve Mlodinow and I happened to have chosen this week to search eastern Washington oases for vagrant passerines. In fact, earlier that day (September 6th) we’d found a Bell’s Vireo, just the second ever in Washington, at a city park in the small isolated town of Washtucna. However, our thunder was muted once news of the flycatcher hit the airwaves.

We learned of the flycatcher, originally thought to be a Sulphur-bellied, from our motel in Othello, Washington, a little more than an hour from Windust Park. Once we viewed the Denny’s photos on the motel’s computer and exchanged some e-mails with a few other birders, we were certain the bird was not a Sulphur-bellied (which barely makes it into the southwest U.S.) because the bill was too small. Though the resources we had with us were light on information about flycatchers from Central and South America, we were pretty sure that this bird was either a Piratic or Variegated flycatcher, but which one? Charlie Wright, who had experience with both species was confident this was a Variegated.

Needless to say, Steve and I were up and on the road before dawn the next morning. When we reached Windust Park shortly after dawn, we were the first birders on the scene. It took us about 15 minutes to relocate the bird, which Steve found hanging around the back yard of a house just outside the park boundary. We watched and photographed the bird for more than three hours as additional carloads of birders continued to arrive. The flycatcher spent the first hour of the day feeding actively. Then, to our slack-jawed amazement, it dropped down nearly at our feet, where it then spent several moments bathing in a puddle of water that had formed beneath an air conditioner on the side of a small shop next to the house. A few minutes later it landed on the lip of a square five-gallon plastic bucket that was sitting near the corner of the shop. Incredibly, the bird perched there for about 15-20 minutes while several of us hammered away on the shutter buttons of our digital cameras.

These birders were among the dozens who came to Windust Park 7 September 2008 to experience this once in a lifetime rarity.

I happened to be standing near the garage when the Variegated Flycatcher landed on the bucket, thus I was only about 15 feet away from it when I took this picture on 7 September 2008.

Prior to this bird, there were only three previous occurrences of Variegated Flycatcher in the United States. To our knowledge, none of these were using similar “habitat.”
Unlike most of my lists, I am hopeful that my bucket list remains stagnant. I’d hate to see it get watered down by having to add Starling or House Sparrow. Of course, I could always claim that my bucket list is “N. I. B.” (No Introduced Birds).


All photos taken by David Irons using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8.