*Reprinted by permission from "American Ornithology," with important
additions.
In order to study the scissorstailed flycatcher (_Milvulus
forficatus_), of which some friends had told me again and again in a
glow of enthusiasm, I made a trip to southern Kansas and northern
Oklahoma. Several days passed before an individual of this species put
in appearance, as the scissorstails, which are migrants, had not yet
returned from their winter quarters in a more southern clime, and so I
had to wait for their arrival.
One day a friend and I were driving along a country road over the
prairie, when a quaint bird form went swinging from the wire fence by
the roadside toward a clump of willows in a shallow dip of the prairie.
Dashing after him, I heard a clear, musical call that proclaimed a bird
with which I had not yet become acquainted.
In a few moments he flew from the tree. My binocular was fixed upon
him as he went flitting across the field and presently alighted on the
ground. My surmise was correct; it was the scissorstail flycatcher,
one of the most unique and handsome birds belonging to our American
avifauna, one that merits more than a passing notice. To see him
perched on a fence, or swinging gracefully through the air, and hear
his bell-like calls and whistles makes you feel as if you were suddenly
transported to a foreign land, like Australia or Borneo, where so many
feathered curios are to be found.
In a fever of excitement I followed the bird, which presently flew back
to the fence by the roadside. He flitted from point to point as my
friend and I slowly pursued him, giving us an exhibition of his
scissoring process. Sometimes he would alight on a post, then on the
barbed wire, usually sitting flat on his breast. When open, the tail
is bicolored, the outer border all around being white and the inner
black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below,
giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are
blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red,
and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet
at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual
that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost
concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly
seen when it was extended. An orange or scarlet gem adorns the crown,
but is so well hidden by the other crest feathers that it is seldom
noticed.
My friend and I were privileged to witness a rare and attractive
scissorstail show, more gratifying than any circus performance. A
loggerhead shrike suddenly appeared on the scene, and made an assault
on the flycatcher. The two birds went gyrating, zigzagging, see-sawing
through the air in a perfect jumble of white and black and ash. It
must be remembered that the shrike himself makes a handsome picture on
the wing, and when you come to mix up a scissorstail and a shrike in
inextricable confusion, you have a feathery display worth seeing.
Nor was that the end of the exhibition, for in a moment a second
scissorstail, the precise _facsimile_ of the first, appeared from
somewhere, and the two flycatchers combined against their enemy. Then
for a few minutes there was such a chaos of shrike and scissorstail
that we could scarcely tell which was which. By and by the shrike
wheeled away, when, as if to bring the gladiatorial show to a climax,
the scissorstails engaged in a set-to that was really wonderful, coming
together in the air, whirling around and around, rising in a spiral
course, opening and closing their beautiful forked tails in quick
succession, the black and white trimmings flashing momentarily, then
disappearing, until the contestants finally descended, parted in the
most graceful manner, and alighted on separate fence posts, none the
worse for their _melee_.
In the evening I returned to the enchanted spot, but the scissorstails
had disappeared. Not having had my fill of these charmers, I stopped,
on my return home, for a day at Wellington, Kansas, where I was so
fortunate as to find three birds of this species, who permitted me to
watch them to my heart's content. They are not shy birds, but fly in a
graceful, leisurely way from post to post along the fence as you walk
or drive, sometimes sitting quietly to let you pass by. In this
respect their habits are much like those of their cousin, the kingbird.
As his name indicates, our bird is the proud possessor of a genuine
scissorstail, composed of two long, slender prongs that are spread far
apart under certain conditions of flight. Let me describe the process
minutely, for it is unique here in North America where fork-tailed
birds are rare.
When the bird starts up from a perch, he spreads apart the prongs of
his tail for a moment, as if to give himself a spring; then he closes
them in a single slender stem, tapering outward to a point, keeping
them closed during prolonged flight, and just as he sweeps down to
another perch, he opens his ornamental scissors again, shutting them up
as soon as he has settled upon his resting place. He does not open and
close his tail at regular intervals during flight, as might be
supposed, but keeps it closed until he descends to a perch, when it is
opened for a moment in the act of alighting. However, if he has
occasion to wheel or make a sudden turn in the air, either for an
insect or in a playful prank, his scissors fly open, one might almost
say spontaneously, no doubt serving the double purpose of rudder and
balancing pole. When closed, the tail is very narrow, looking almost
like a single plume. On the perch (except when he desires to shift his
position, when he also makes use of his wings) his tail is closed.
Therefore the picture of this bird in Dr. Coues's "Key to North
American Birds" is not accurate, for it represents our bird in the
sitting posture with the tines of his fork spread apart. If the wings
were outstretched, representing the bird in the act of alighting or
shifting his position, the picture would be true to scissorstail life.
The range of these birds is somewhat restricted, and for that reason,
doubtless, so little is known about their habits. According to
Ridgway, their proper home is in eastern Mexico and the southwestern
prairie districts of the United States, though many of them come north
as far as southern Kansas and southwestern Missouri to spend the summer
and rear their families. In winter they go as far south as Costa Rico.
Restricted as their habitat is, it is curious to note that they are
"accidental" in a few unexpected places, such as Key West, Fla.,
Norfolk, Va., and also in several localities in New England, Manitoba,
and Hudson Bay Territory. Prof. W. W. Cooke, of Colorado, says they
are "rare, if not accidental," in that state. To show that our birds
are unique, it is relevant to say that there are only two species of
scissors-tailed flycatchers in North America, which have the genus
_Milvulus_ all to themselves. The other member of the genus is the
forked-tailed flycatcher (_Milvulus tyrannus_), a resident of tropical
America, migrating north normally as far as southern Mexico. He is a
sort of southern twin of our scissorstail.
The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the
neighborhood of country homes on the prairie. Considering the size of
the birds, their nests are quite small, not so large as those of the
brown thrashers, though the cup is deeper and the architecture more
compact and elaborate. A friend describes a nest which he found on a
locust tree about sixteen feet from the ground. It was made mostly of
dry grass and locust blossoms, with here and there a piece of twine
braided into the structure. It had no special lining, but the grass
was more evenly woven on the inside of the cup than elsewhere.
From three to five eggs are deposited. The ground color is white,
either pure or creamy, sparingly mottled with rich madder-brown and
lilac-gray, the spots being thicker and larger on the larger end.
While the nest is undergoing examination, the owners circle and hover
overhead, much after the fashion of the red-winged blackbirds,
expressing their disapproval in loud and musical calls, and displaying
their rich scarlet decorations.
My descriptions have related only to the male bird, whose beautiful
forked tail is nine to ten inches long, and whose colors are clear and
more or less intense. His spouse resembles him, but is slightly
smaller, while her tail, though forked like her mate's, is from two and
a half to three inches shorter. The salmon and scarlet ornaments on
the sides, flanks, and axillars are paler than those of her lord, and
the scarlet spot shows very indistinctly on her occiput. The young of
both sexes don the dress of the mother bird during the first season,
save that they fail to adorn themselves with a scarlet gem on the crown.
Like all the members of the flycatcher group, the scissorstails capture
insects while on the wing, making many an attractive picture as they
perform their graceful and interesting evolutions in the air.
It was a year or two later that I saw a scissorstail performing his
ablutions in the northwestern part of Arkansas. How do you suppose he
went about it? Not in the way birds usually do, by squatting down in
the shallow water, twinkling their wings and tail, and sprinkling the
liquid all over their plumage. No; this bird has a reputation to
maintain for originality, and therefore he took his bath in this
manner: First he perched on a telegraph wire by the roadside; then he
swung gracefully down to a little pond, dashed lightly into the water,
giving himself a slight wetting, after which he flew up to his original
perch on the wire. A minute or less was then spent in preening his
plumes; but they were not moist enough to suit his purpose, so he
darted down to the pond again, making the spray rise as lie struck the
water; then up to his perch he swung again, to arrange his feathers;
and this was repeated a number of times, till his toilet was completed.
It would not be safe to risk saying that the scissorstail always takes
his bath in this way; but I know this one did. I once saw a kingbird
doing the same thing, and so it may be a fashion in flycatcher circles.
I am minded, in order to make this monograph more complete, to borrow a
couple of paragraphs from Mrs. Bailey's "Handbook of Birds of the
Western United States." She has studied the bird in the Southwest, and
gives the following graphic description of the bird and its habits:
"One of his favorite performances is to fly up and, with rattling
wings, execute an aërial seesaw, a line of sharp-angled VVVVVVV's,
helping himself at the short turns by rapidly opening and shutting his
long white scissors. As he goes up and down he utters all the while a
penetrating scream, _Ka-quee-ka-quee-ka-quee-ka-quee-ka-quee_, the
emphasis being given each time at the top of the ascending line.
"Frequently when he is passing along with the even flight of a
sober-minded crow, and you are quietly admiring the salmon lining of
his wings, he shoots rattling into the air, and, as you stare after
him, drops back as suddenly as he rose. He does this apparently
because the spirit moves him, as a boy slings a stone at the sky, but
fervor is added by the appearance of a rival or an enemy, for he is
much like a _Tyrannus_ in his masterful way of controlling the
landscape. He will attack caracaras and white-necked ravens, lighting
on their backs and giving them vicious blows while screaming in their
ears."