I am excited to announce that today marks the official 5th week out from surgery! Let me get my calculator out..tap, tap, tap, tap 6, tap tap tap, minus, tap, tap, 5, tap, tap, carry the one, tap, tap, divide by PI, tap tap invert, tap log, tap, tap….tap tap tap equals…YES the answer is 1. That’s right, only one more week left in this 6 weeks of no weight hell. I now have firsthand experience how people can go batshit crazy. That will just get me to the boot, but PT will start that day and physical pain means strength and strength is the road back to the trail! To my credit, I have been keeping busy since getting the stitches out. Maybe a bit too close to former “work”, I’ve been in front of the computer for hours on end each day getting caught up on the photo queue (almost done with Texas March 2024), tackling the heavy lifting posts (2024 Haunted Trail recap), producing the Intrigued Haunt YouTube tutorials (Haunted Tree) and doing my very best to get caught up on all my post reading – whew!
In case you are interested, here are the links to the 2024 Haunted Trail recaps:
Trail of Fears 2024 – The Clearing, the Build and then the Panic – link here
Haunted Trail 2024 – The Dark Woods – link here
I’ll put the latest tutorial video at the end of this post for those that want a behind the scenes look at how we created our 9′ by 10+’ haunted tree in tribute to the previous broken elbow “incident” – yes, the Root of all Evil!
Of course, we know the main reason you are here and that’s feather watching – we have something for that as well.
Today’s featured feathered friend is a fitting selection for the “hard work” theme. Hit the jump to learn a bit more about this diminutive bird.
Ever have those times where you know your next move is going to result in a lot of work in the future. I definitely get that feeling whenever I start work on a new Halloween prop. No matter how much I plan it out, it is ALWAYS going to take longer than expected (did you see that.. Linda just rolled her eyes!). That haunted tree is a fine example of that – we were learning big time on the fly with that build. Turns out that same experience happens whenever I come upon members of the Tyrant group
Not in all cases, I have become familiar with several in the Tyrannidae family over the years. A few are more flamboyant like the Vermilion Flycatcher (link here) and Scissor Flycatcher (link here). Others I get good looks all summer long such as the Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Phoebe and Eastern Wood-Peewee. Still others we get well acquainted with on our trips down south which includes the Great Kiskadee, Say’s Phoebe and Black Phoebe. Trust me, there are many more in this grouping that I am sure every birder out there comes close to tearing their hair out trying to identify – I’m looking at you Empidonax Catchers (don’t get me started with Adlers vs Willows).
Subtle shades of grey through green paired with minimal highlights ranging from olive to yellow – some with wing bars, a smattering with bi-colored bills and although some can be sub-grouped by size and perch posture, that still leaves intensive detective work to get it down to one or more like two or three. It usually goes like this in the field:
Think I see a movement over there
Yes, definitely a bird
Wait, it just left, no it just came back to another perch near where it left (dread starting to swell)
Yes, it is definitely make multiple sorties
Please have some color or markings I know, please, please, please! (mouth going dry)
Small stature, dull wash of color
Bring the Beast on point while saying way too loudly “OH CRAP ANOTHER TYRANT”
Click, sigh, click, sigh, click sigh.….
It just occurred to me that my backlog is really due to the absolute dread of spending hours in the digital darkroom pouring over pages and pages of Tyrant identifiers and NOT pure laziness on my part (there, did you see that, Linda just did it again!)
Clearly this Flycatcher fits this dreadful ID classification. This little fluff ball was found while Ron and I were exploring Catalina State Park outside of Tucson, AZ back in January of 2024. I have talked about this particular state park several times in the past. It is absolutely gorgeous and one of my favorite birding locations (link here). We were on their 1 mile Birding Trail loop when I noticed this small grayish bird sitting quietly in a clump of trees off to the side. So still that it was really hard to get Ron’s eyes on it – “see that clump of trees, now that small opening between the leaves, not that one, up more, over more, there is a tiny ball of feathers perched on a tiny branch, other branch, the one it just left and went to another impossible spot to describe.” Eventually we got on the same page, then the hard work really began.
Getting shots of this ~ 5.7″ bird was an absolute struggle. The Beast was playing autofocus ping pong between the nearby branches and this devious Tyrant was hell bent to keep something between it and our cameras. What I did manage to get in the tin is technically embarrassing, however, this is the only looks we could get of it and it was a +1 for both of us! I should see if Ron got better shots and update this post if he did.
Very thin eye ring, that really tiny pale mark just in front of the eye (see shot above), bi-colored bill, subtle but wide wingbars and fits the diminutive size of the Gray Flycatcher. Region was within parameters as they are a western bird with breeding, migration and nonbreeding bands all converging across Arizona (for some reason they despise California). I also happened to know that they were being spotted here based on the eBird reports we checked before driving out there. Had we been later in the year I would have definitely had to wrestle with differentiating from the Hammond’s (shorter tail) or the Dusky (which is duskier ha).
Another good take on the Gray is their tail behavior. According to Cornell’s website, they will habitually dip their tails down (Note, Duskies flip their tails up). We did not see that distinguishing characteristic on our encounter. Guessing it was trying to stay motionless to inflict as much agony as it could on our birding souls. Definitely want to head back there on a future trip and try for better shots – something tells me it is going to be the same story “Oh crap…”
I promised you a look at our video from the Intrigued Haunt Department and here it is:
Unlike the previous video tutorials, I was not able to be in front of the camera for this one thanks to the ankle. This was also before we started videotaping the build process so we only had pictures taken along the way to use in explaining how we put it all together. It is revealed in the video, but we did have a mishap with this prop just before the guests were to start arriving that was a huge disappointment. Looking forward to having Revenge out in its full glory for this year’s event.
Take care everyone, thanks for coming by. Everyone at Intrigued appreciates your time and we always enjoy hearing from you in the comments area.
Life Intrigued 