A fork-tailed flycatcher makes a rare – and much-watched – appearance at Maine Audubon on Monday. The bird arrived at the meadows of Gilsland Farm in Falmouth on Saturday.
© Jill BradyA fork-tailed flycatcher makes a rare – and much-watched – appearance at Maine Audubon on Monday. The bird arrived at the meadows of Gilsland Farm in Falmouth on Saturday.
The opportunity to see a rare bird exerts a powerful call.

It's why Inna Smith's trip to a doctor's appointment in New Hampshire on Monday included a stop at Maine Audubon in Falmouth to see a fork-tailed flycatcher from South America. Nevermind that the Springvale woman was pregnant and a day overdue.

"I was due yesterday," Smith said while looking at the bird through her camera's telephoto lens. "I may go into labor right here."

Smith was one of more than 100 birders who traveled from as far away as Mount Desert Island and New York state to witness the unusual sighting. The bird arrived at the meadows of Gilsland Farm on Saturday.

The flycatcher - a black-and-white bird with an extremely long and brilliantly forked tail - should have been emigrating south from Central America to summer in its home range instead of flying north to Maine, said Maine Audubon Naturalist Doug Hitchcox, who spent the day showing the bird to visitors.

The forked-tailed flycatcher hangs out at Maine Audubon while making a rare appearance in North America. The National Audubon Society says most of the species reaching Maine are likely from southern South America.
The forked-tailed flycatcher hangs out at Maine Audubon while making a rare appearance in North America. The National Audubon Society says most of the species reaching Maine are likely from southern South America.
But sometimes birds get turned around and go in the opposite direction, Hitchcox said. He said the fork-tailed flycatcher has been recorded in Maine at least a dozen times before, but not since June 2012, when it was seen in Brunswick. And that was a "one-day wonder," Hitchcox said.

It always draws a crowd when word of its sighting goes viral.

In April, two birds never seen before in Maine created a buzz in the birding community when a fieldfare, a thrush native to northern Europe and Asia, and a vermilion flycatcher, a red-feathered bird native to the southwestern United States, were seen in Maine's midcoast.

Hitchcox said the fork-tailed flycatcher that arrived Saturday was not pushed up by the winds of Hurricane Irma, since the bird was not coming from the Caribbean. He said there haven't been any tropical birds seen in Maine as a result of hurricanes Irma or Harvey.

However, Hurricane Jose, now a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean, is expected to weaken to a tropical storm and graze southern New England. If it does, it could carry some tropical birds to Maine, Hitchcox said.

"Birders are funny," he said. "They don't want to experience a hurricane, but if you talk to them, boy, do they want it to rip right into the coast of Maine to see those birds from the tropics - so long as it hits a section of the coastline that is uninhabited, but also one with public access so (they) can get out there to see the birds."

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