[Maine-birds] Fork-tailed Flycatcher and Chestnut-collared Longspur photos

Great birds over the past couple of days! I made some comments on age,
sex, and subspecies of the Fork-tailed Flycatcher at my Flickr page
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/68931408@N04/). I think this bird might
be a 1.5 yr-old male of the nominate subspecies, which migrate north
for the Austral winter to northern South America. This bird overshot
those wintering grounds, a phenomenon that is still puzzling. Most
records in the Northeast are birds that occur in fall, and thus
migrants that flew the opposite direction when leaving its wintering
grounds. More on the reasoning behind that speculation is at my Flickr
page.

The longspur (one of my photos at Flickr link above) fits a pattern of
mid-June records to the Northeast in the Maritime provinces and New
England, but is the first for Maine at this time of year and only the
second ever with photos or specimen evidence. Ralph Palmer in his 1949
volume on the birds of Maine cited a very old mid-August specimen
(from 1886; thanks to Bill Sheehan for pointing this out). The bird
was identified by William Brewster as a Chestnut-collared, but the
current location of the specimen is unknown.

Thanks Doug Hitchcox for keeping us all alerted to these birds!

Louis Bevier
Fairfield

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