Fork-tailed Flycatcher here and gone

Here's another photo of the East Hampton Fork-tailed Flycatcher from Terry Sullivan clearly showing the longish tail (without white tips), gray back plus white wrapping round the neck. Fork-tailed Flycatchers breed from Mexico all the way to Argentina. The southern birds fly north to the tropics for their winter (which is now) and apparently some of them overshoot, ending up in North America! The breeding male has one of the longest tails in comparison to body size of any bird so this bird would be a female or, more likely, an immature with a shorter tail (still on the long side). Apparently the bird was seen on May 25 and not since; they typically appear one day and are gone the next -- presumably heading north still looking for their winter Amazonian refuge.

The Osprey pair were back on the Chesterfield crane which is still sitting on a barge in the creek. At any rate, they haven't started building their nest on the crane (or, as far as I can tell, anywhere else). I had a brief look at a hummingbird (species unidentified). White-breasted Nuthatch is still around. A Great Blue Heron with lots of white in its plumage is probably a different immature bird than the one that was here in June.

Spotted Wintergreen is starting to bloom. This is a striking pine barrens understory plant with bicolored green-and-white leaves (it looks like one of those tropical house plants). The white flowers make an almost ghostly appearance in the understory of the woods, first as round berry-like buds and then as a nodding waxy bloom.

Two desert plants which like our sandy soils are in full bloom right now: Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia) which is a LI native and Yucca or Spanish Bayonet, an almost native now widely escaped on LI. We used to have both of these plants on the property but they are now shaded out, the cactus gone completely, the Yucca still surviving but no longer blooming.

Eric Salzman