BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
YOU'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE!
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
Imagine you are a small wind-borne traveler, several miles in the air, carried by an invisible river, looking down into a sea of grey. A break appears ahead and as your energy wanes, down you sail, only to find yourself skimming above an alien landscape. To the east, water and waves - salt taints your nostrils. Back to the west, dry land rises and off you flutter, barely above the foaming whitecaps until you cling to the side of Sankaty Bluff.

Western Kingbird

This may be the way that many a Western Kingbird finds its way to our island. Their native haunts are to the west of the Mississippi River. Unknown in the east until the late nineteenth century, they are now a regular occurrence in the fall, considered a step above rare - uncommon.

Our summer resident kingbirds, Eastern Kingbirds, have headed south by now. Although in the same scientific genus, Tyrannus, they look a lot different - dark, almost black above, and pure white below. These westerners have grey heads, yellow bellies, and black square tails with white flags at the sides, rather than a white band around the end. By shape and behavior though, they are kingbirds through and through.

All kingbirds are flycatchers. Ninety percent of their diet is insects, most of which are caught in midair. Flycatchers are a beginning birder's dream. Instead of skulking in the brush, they tend to perch up where you can see them. Periodically they sally forth, often with marvelous aerobatic exercises as they pursue their next snack. Generally they return to the same perch to bash their prey on a branch to make it more palatable. So if you miss seeing the bird on your first opportunity, you get another chance.

Why are they 'king' birds? Some say it is because they have a patch of red atop their head, like a crown. But in reality you have to have the bird in hand and rumple the head feathers to find it. More likely the name comes from their regal approach to anything entering their nesting territory. Although smaller than a robin, they are quickly into the air, calling in irritation and diving on the interloper.

Thus, at this time of year our kingbirds come from over a thousand miles to the west. There the bird is ubiquitous, found on every ranch. When I lived in Colorado it was a bird of the telephone wires, its staccato call almost always in my ear. When they first arrive in the spring, the males hurtle high in the air in a wild and rambunctious display, calling all the while, reminding you of the antics of a daredevil pilot at an air show.

In an area where trees are at a premium, they are creative in their nest placement. Any sort of ledge, nook, or cranny, may be chosen. Major Charles Bendire, whose voluminous writings from the western frontier in the late 1800s provided many with a first glimpse of avian life from this wild part of our continent, described a nest on an attic windowsill at a fort in Idaho. "They probably would not have succeeded in keeping this nest in place had I not nailed a piece of board along the outside to prevent the wind from blowing the materials away as fast as the birds could bring them."

Western Kingbird nests are wonderful affairs. Bendire describes them as lined with buffalowool. Nowadays the fluff from cottonwood trees replaces that. The four eggs have a wonderful, soft lining to rest on. Crickets become one of the main elements of a chick's diet, one observer noting fourteen being consumed in a ten-minute period.

All kingbirds are neotropical migrants, spending their winters in the tropics well below our southern borders. So how do these western birds end up here? Is their compass just turned the wrong way? In some cases, this may be the right answer. At this time of the year, over half our landbird population is made up of birds just hatched, attempting their first migration. Like the young of any species, they do foolish things, fly into buildings, get caught by cats, or fly off in the wrong direction.

However, we have another natural phenomenon that can enter the picture - the jet stream. The jet stream is like a high-speed beltway across the country - perhaps similar to that magic wormhole between galaxies often used in "Star Trek." Sometimes it meanders at 75 to 100 miles per hour, other times, two or three hundred. Usually it doesn't kick in until six miles up, but now and then it's below 20,000 feet.

So our little kingbird in the first paragraph of this story may just have been experiencing the euphoria of flight. Out in Kansas in the late afternoon there are often huge and dramatic thermals, vertical columns of rising air that can easily provide a doorway to the jet stream. Off we go, sucked into the gathering twilight to the east, carried through the hours of darkness.

As the late and great Roger Tory Peterson said, "Birds can fly, and they do." But when you can fly, where do you come down? Already this year we've had a Western Kingbird near Boston. It's not unusual to find one on Nantucket through the end of November. In 1982 we had three show up on our Christmas Bird Count. Watch the fence wires around Bartlett's Farm for these yellow-bellied

birds from Kansas. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles. If you enjoy 'social' birding, join the Nantucket Bird Club at 8 a.m. Sundays in front of Nantucket High School for a two to three hour birding trip. Call 228-1693 for more information.

To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 888-224-6444, option 4. Ask Ken a question at: kenandcindy@copper.net.