Gray Flycatcher

Unassuming and inconspicuous, the Gray Flycatcher is yet another member of the notoriously difficult to identity Empidonax genus. They have a much broader range than some other members of the species. They breed throughout the western portions of the United States and wintering throughout most of Mexico. Gray Flycatchers range from the high deserts of the Great Basin to the sagebrush country and the open wood of juniper and pinyon. They are common winter in the mesquite thickets and streamside groves of southern Arizona.

About Gray Flycatchers

These birds have a lot in common with the closely related Dusky Flycatchers. From overlapping ranges to their similar appearance, it can be quite difficult to tell the two apart in most cases. However, this bird has one feature that is a tell-tale sign of its originality. These birds dip their tail downward in the same phoebes wag their tail. Other members of the Empidonax species flick their tail upwards. This is a common trait of identification among birders.

Today, we will be picking apart all the details about these bird’s lives and presenting what makes them unique among the other Flycatchers. We will be going over:

● Gray Flycatcher Photos, Color Pattern, Song
● Gray Flycatcher Size, Eating Behavior, Habitat
● Gray Flycatcher Range and Migration, Nesting

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Gray Flycatcher Color Pattern

Adult Gray Flycatchers are pale gray above and white below, with a noticeably long tail that has white outer edges. Their bills are bicolored, with the upper mandible a dark blackish and the lower mandible a pink or yellow. Unlike many other Flycatchers within this family, they have little to no olive tones. Their wings are a blackish to dark gray, often with 2 narrow whitish bars on the wings. Their wings have a thin edging of very light gray on their borders and the outermost edge. While their tail is a medium gray to brown. Their underparts are a white shade that extends to their throat. They have a darker breast band that is almost broken by the paler area around it. Their lower belly and under-tail coverts are nearly white or with a faint pale, yellow wash.

Birds of both sexes look similar to each other. You can identify females by their brood patch. Juveniles have gray upperparts with a tinge of brown, while their underparts have a pale brownish-buff wash. Their wing bars and the tertial edges of their wings are a slightly contrasting pale buff.

Description and Identification

Gray Flycatchers can be surprisingly easy to find in habitats that at first seem vast and even monotonous. Walking through tall sagebrush, especially from late April through late May, males sing in the morning. These delicate Flycatchers usually perch on sage or lower parts of trees to sing and forage. This makes them conspicuous despite their pale plumage. If you catch a glimpse of them flicking their tail downwards, you will know that you have found the bird that you have been looking for. Their environment is often very windy, so try for them on calm mornings for best results.

Gray Flycatcher Song

Unlike Hammond’s Flycatchers and Dusky Flycatchers which have three elements in a single song type, Gray Flycatchers have two elements with two typical song types. The most frequent element is a 2 syllable note that has an equal accent on each syllable “chuwip”. The second is also 2 syllables but is weaker and more high-pitched. The second one is a faint “teeap”. These two types are used in a variety of combinations in their songs.

The first song has the first element constantly repeating, it sounds like “sprlat sprlat”, or “chlup chlup”, or “chu lup chu lup”. The second song type contains both elements and sounds like a “sprlat prit” or a “sprlat seep”. The songs mainly create reinforcing pair bonds during the breeding seasons, but they sometimes use them during hostile encounters between territorial and intruding males. It is also frequently heard during territorial defense interactions with singing male Dusky Flycatchers.

Both sexes have call notes that sound like a dry “pit” or “wit”, with less of the thick, initial “wh-” quality in calls. It is an alarm call for situations of potential threat, but it can also function as a position that calls for a pair. Calls used by both sexes in solicitation displays or when greeting their other half is described as “d-d-d-d-d or dit-dit-dit-dit-dit”, with an additional call by males described as “whea”. This is sometimes combined with the rattle call, which sounds like a “whea, whea, pddrt, pddrt, whea, whea, pddrt”. Rattle calls are common by both sexes during hostile territorial encounters and chases.

They also have a flight song that sounds like “whit-whit-whit-whit-wheak-wheat-wheat-stiddle-d-doo-stiddle-d-doo”. These calls also include rapid notes during aerial chases, which sounds like “wheak-wheak-wheak-wheak”.

Gray Flycatcher Size

Gray Flycatchers are small and slim birds that have a body length of 5.5–5.9 inches and an approximate weight of 0.4–0.5 ounces. They have a fairly long, narrow bill when compared to other members of the family. Their wings are short and have a wingspan of roughly 8.7 inches, which makes their tail seem rather long. These proportions make these birds larger than Yellow-rumped Warblers but slightly smaller than Western Wood-Pewees.

Gray Flycatcher Behavior

These birds can be very territorial during the breeding seasons. Aggressive displays to intruding males include tail pumping, tail spreading, crest raising, bill snapping, chasing, combat, gaping, and body fluffing. Tail pumping is a moderate form of aggression, where they move their tail quickly downward and then they rapidly return it to its original position. Tail spreading is simply a spreading or fanning of the tail feathers and is often accompanied by tail pumping. Raising the crest makes the head appear larger and is also for expressing high levels of aggression. Bill snapping is the audible, rapid clicking of the mandibles, and it mainly occurs in threatening contexts. In extreme situations, conflicts may escalate from chases to physical fights that include pecking and grasping another bird with its bill.

On returning from wintering grounds, male Gray Flycatchers establish territories by singing from favored perches around the territory and driving out rival males and occasionally females and even males of other species, such as Dusky Flycatchers. Females also defend territories against other females (and males), so scientists think that this species is most likely monogamous in its mating system. Courtship includes paired flights, with the male sometimes diving at the female, then perching with a flutter of wings and tail. Females build the nest, with occasional help from males. Once the female has laid eggs, both sexes become much less territorial, and males sing mostly in the early morning. Migrants typically fall silent, but wintering birds call and occasionally sing, suggesting that some may
be territorial on the wintering grounds.

Gray Flycatcher Diet

Gray Flycatcher eats mostly insects. Like other Empidonax species, these birds hunt visually from a perch, often near the top of a shrub or lower limbs of a tree. The hunting perch is often a dead branch, from which they sally out quickly to snap an insect in the air, from the vegetation, or from the ground, sometimes hovering briefly before returning to the same perch. This species takes insects from the ground more often than other Empidonax. Among the few documented prey items are beetles, grasshoppers, wasps, moths, and ant lions. It is likely that they also consume small fruits, especially during the nonbreeding months in southern Arizona and Mexico.

Gray Flycatcher Habitat

Gray Flycatchers are largely a species of the high desert, Great Basin, and bordering foothills and mountains. Hot and dry on summer days, and often very cold at night, these environments are also often very windy. The “sagebrush sea” is the local nickname for the shrubsteppe habitat that dominates the Great Basin, and Gray Flycatchers are relatively
common there. Gray Flycatchers do nest on open sagebrush flats, but they prefer areas of tall, old-growth big sagebrush, which is often found along edges of valleys and washes rather than flats or ridgetops. In many parts of the species’ range, other hardy brushy plants like saltbush, antelope brush, buckbrush, manzanita, greasewood, and sumac also occur. In addition to sagebrush-dominated habitats, open habitats with evergreens such as Joshua tree, incense cedar, white fir, Douglas-fir, junipers (pinyon, one-seed, Rocky Mountain, and Utah), pines (pinyon, yellow, Jeffrey, ponderosa), or Garry oak provide nesting habitats. Sometimes these trees form an overstory at the edge of the brushy habitat, where sagebrush is an understory plant. In most places, Gray Flycatchers inhabit areas above 4,000 feet in elevation, but some nest lower than 2,000 feet and some as high as 7,800 feet. Migrants can turn up in almost any habitat, but like other western Empidonax, they often seek food and shelter along streams (especially places with tamarisk, willow, or cottonwood), in chaparral, or in oases of green vegetation in deserts. Wintering birds in southern Arizona use mesquite bosques and streamside groves. Wintering birds in Mexico use similar habitats but also use
subtropical thorn forests and scrubs.

Range and Migration

Gray Flycatchers breed from southernmost British Columbia, through a narrow zone in central Washington, to eastern Oregon and California. Their range extends east across Nevada, southern Idaho, Utah, and northern Arizona to southwestern Wyoming, western Colorado, and northwestern New Mexico. Migration seasons take these short-distance migrants towards Baja California Sur, south-eastern Arizona, and central Sonora to central Oaxaca. While most of their populations opt for the north to central Mexico during the winters, small numbers may be found in western Texas and southern California.

Gray Flycatcher Lifecycle

Gray Flycatchers lay their only brood of the year during the breeding seasons, with females laying 3–4 creamy-white eggs. Only females carry out incubation, with the period lasting approximately 14 days. When the eggs hatch, they emerge completely naked and in a helpless state. While only females brood the chicks, both parents feed them. The young leave the nest and make their first flights around 16 days after hatching.

Nesting

Nest is placed on evergreen trees or shrubs, generally in pine or juniper around the trunk of the tree. They are almost always about 10 feet or less above the ground. Females build a broad, coarse, and almost flat cup of grass, sage, plant fibers, pine needles, and bark, often rimmed with juniper. The interiors are then lined with grass, wool, hair, feathers, and plant down.

Anatomy of a Gray Flycatcher

Gray Flycatchers are small and slim birds that have a body length of 5.5–5.9 inches and an approximate weight of 0.4–0.5 ounces. They have a fairly long, narrow bill when compared to other members of the family. Their wings are short and have a wingspan of roughly 8.7 inches, which makes their tail seem rather long. These proportions make these birds larger than Yellow-rumped Warblers but slightly smaller than Western Wood-Pewees.

Final Thoughts

Unusual for most wild birds, Gray Populations have been noted to increase in number by an estimate of 2.4% every year since the late 1960s. This makes them a species of low continental concern. However, they still suffer from threats that are a result of urban development, including timber extraction, cattle operations, mining of oil shale and coal, gas drilling, oil drilling, and other industrial operations. Since they inhabit dry regions, recovery of the natural vegetation can take many decades. Invasive species like cheatgrass also prevent native vegetation from returning.

These birds have intrigued scientists for a long time. Not only are they strangely similar to other species within the region, but they have also been known to randomly stray off course and land up in regions well outside their range. Answers regarding how or why they have been recorded so far away from their habitat are practically non-existent, leading to scientists around the world scratching their heads over yet another mystery of the avian world.

Ornithology

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Bird Watching Binoculars for IdentifyingGray Flycatchers

The most common types of bird watching binoculars for viewing Gray Flycatchers are 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. Bird Watching Academy & Camp sells really nice 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. You can view and purchase them here.

Gray Flycatcher Stickers

Stickers are a great way for you to display your love for bird watching and the Gray Flycatcher. We sell a monthly subscription sticker pack. The sticker packs have 12 bird stickers. These sticker packs will help your kids learn new birds every month.

Bird Feeders For Gray Flycatchers

There are many types of bird feeders. Bird feeders are a great addition to your backyard. Bird feeders will increase the chances of attracting birds drastically. Both kids and adults will have a great time watching birds eat at these bird feeders. There are a wide variety of bird feeders on the market and it is important to find the best fit for you and your backyard.

Bird HousesFor Gray Flycatchers

There are many types of bird houses. Building a bird house is always fun but can be frustrating. Getting a bird house for kids to watch birds grow is always fun. If you spend a little extra money on bird houses, it will be well worth every penny and they’ll look great.