A couple of weeks ago I saw that the Social Flycatcher at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville had been seen again by local birder Michelle Cano. The fourth US record of this Mexican species was was first found during the RGV Birding Festival last November and was seen by hundreds of birders though late March. But local birders got caught up in chasing pretty spring warblers and quit looking for it so it was assumed the Social Flycatcher had just wandered off.
Today I took my wife Honey to her favorite gym in Brownsville and I took the opportunity to search the resaca habitat at the UTRGV campus for the Social Flycatcher. It took about an hour before I finally heard it call in the oaks on the north side of the resaca near El Comedor. I whistled a few Ferruginous Pygmy Owl toots and the Social Flycatcher zoomed in and continued to call. It's molting and looking a little ratty these days.
So why has this bird spent the past seven months at this location? There have been rumors of a second bird but no one has documented more than one. It would be pretty cool if they were breeding on the campus. Maybe the large number of other flycatchers like Great Kiskadee, Couch's and Tropical Kingbirds and Brown-crested Flycatchers keep it in the area though my intuition would guess that they would drive the bird away. Well I guess I need to drop by once in a while to monitor the situation.
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