The Howland Picture Pages: Olive-sided Flycatcher

Page by Royce
Last update: $Date: 2004/09/05 00:40:13 $

The Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi) is one of the few flycatcher species that is relatively straight-forward to identify by sight, despite possessing fairly drab plumage like many of its cousins in the Contopus (e.g. Western Wood-Pewee) and Empidonax genera. While this species does occur fairly commonly in our home area, to our knowledge we have only seen one a couple of times. Upon the first sighting, however, it was immediately clear that it was the Olive-sided species: the light and dark "vest" feathers contrast very strongly, and the dark feathers are visibly streaked.

Resources where you can find out more:

• Olive-sided Flycatcher profile at weaselhead.org
• Olive-sided Flycatcher profile at the USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter

(click image for larger photo)

On August 27, 2004, we made a trip to Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, which is one of the best birding locations in Calgary proper. I had heard that an Olive-sided Flycatcher had been seen recently at IBS, and sure enough -- almost the first thing we saw once we hit the main trail loop was the bird pictured here. While the angle was bad and the light wasn't too hot, I got three reasonable shots of the flycatcher with my digiscoping rig. The identifying characteristics of the "vest" feathers were clearly visible to the eye, and in the photo as well. EXIF 2.2 photo info:   320 x 564  true color Exposure time: 1/73.60 F-stop: 6.0 ISO speed: 100 Focal length: 18.9000 (plus Pentax PF-80EDA scope & William Optics DCL-28 eyepiece) Exposure mode: Auto White balance: Auto Exposure bias: 0.0000 Metering mode: Spot Exposure program: Aperture priority Gain control: None Contrast: Normal Saturation: High Sharpness: Hard Camera make: NIKON Camera model: E4500 Larger photo info: 480 x 845  true color 96KB

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