Readers’ wildlife photos

Today’s lovely photos are of scissor-tailed flycatchers, and come from Pratyaydipta Rudra, a statistician at Oklahoma State University.  Pratyay’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This is a collection of photos of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers (Tyrannus forficatus) that I have taken over the past few years after I moved to Oklahoma. I don’t remember the exact date taken for each individual photo (all taken during the summer months); so I have skipped that information and included some stories behind in each photo.

When we moved to North-central Oklahoma four years ago, my wife and I, both birders and photographers, were not very hopeful about the bird photography opportunities in this part of the country. Given the fact that we have stayed in places with amazing photo opportunities in both the Eastern and Western parts of the US, there were very few new birds we could get, except, of course, the chance to photograph inarguably the best state bird of all states on its breeding ground. Over the last few years, we have got many photos of these Scissor-tailed Flycatchers that we liked. This photo was captured at one of our local lakes.

A long-tailed male posing here. Females typically have slightly shorter tails:

These birds are quite territorial and vocal while establishing their territories:

Some aerial action of the Scissor-tailed Flycatchers. Love their social interactions!:

This is another image immediately after their spring arrival when they are most conspicuous:

These two seemed to be a mated pair… So this was more like playful chasing rather than territorial battles:

This looks more fierce, but these two were also a pair:

While photographing Scissor-tailed Flycatchers at my favorite spot, I was wondering how beautiful the golden light on the dark clouds looked like and it would be so great if a bird posed for me in this light. Right then, this scissortail flew in and started flycatching right in front of me. These birds can easily go for at least 10-20 insects within a span of five minutes during this time at the end of the day. This shot was taken a split second after catching a mosquito:

Those long tail feathers of the males look quite beautiful when the perform their aerial courtship displays:

The females and immature scissortails have shorter tail feathers than the male birds, but these shorter-tailed ones are more abundant during the fall before they migrate South (mostly due to all the new ones born in the current year):

Right before catching an insect!

When there is more than one option to pick from!:

Another image from the same series:

I have noticed that the flycatchers shift to a diet consisting of larger insects as they get ready for their fall migration. I have seen them regularly eating larger moths and butterflies during this time, which is relatively uncommon earlier in the season. In this case, the bird caught a big cicada. In our area, cicadas are common food source for larger birds such as Mississippi Kites (Ictinia mississippiensis), but I was surprised to see the flycatcher being able to grab one in the air:

A cellphone image of scissortails congregating before their migration. There are 30 of them in this photo:

I think most of them have left our area now. Looking forward to seeing them back next spring: