Dawn Song of a Great Crested Flycatcher
In the gray light of early morning, about 45 minutes before sunrise, one of the most enthusiastic birdsongs outside my open window was a brightly repeated wheee-er. After a few minutes of listening, I realized that it was a Great Crested Flycatcher, but the song was quite different from its daytime whreep or burrrt – not guttural or burry, but with a lighter, more musical, ringing quality. After listening a little while longer, it became clear that what had at first sounded like a repeated “wheee-er” was actually something like WHEEE-eer; wheeee-UP. The difference between the two parts was subtle, not as greatly different as the typed words make it seem, but clearly two different variations or phrases.
I think this was the dawn song of the Great Crested Flycatcher, something I don’t remember having heard before. The species account in Birds of North America* includes a description of its dawn song that sounds very much like what I heard. A Great Crested Flycatcher is frequently around our house and yard, so it’s not surprising that it would be one of our early morning singers. The BNA account also describes a third part of the dawn song that is very low and difficult to hear, a kind of prrr or chrrr. I did not hear this part.
Although the dawn chorus has seemed rather subdued most of this spring season, with fewer singers than usual – especially fewer neotropical migrants – it’s still a beautiful time. Two Chipping Sparrows sang their short bursts of trills; Northern Cardinal, Carolina Wren, Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Bluebird, Pine Warbler, Tufted Titmouse, Northern Mockingbird and Brown Thrasher also sang. A Blue-gray Gnatcatcher called spee – though I didn’t hear it sing.
*Wesley E. Lanyon, 1997. Great Crested Flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.) Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology.