ML123279301

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Josh Livingston and I were out driving the rural back roads of north central Ring gold and south central Union counties, in search of migrants. We were discussing south west and western vagrant flycatchers, when we crested a small hill and I saw a dark pheobe like flycatcher flying low over a short grazed pasture. I told Josh to pull over as I suspected a Say's, due to how uniformly dark it was. At this point it was about 75 or so yards way. I got my binoculars on it and confirmed it as a Say's Pheobe. Josh and I enjoyed nice scope views for about 15 minutes before it flew south east out over a pasture. We lost sight of it over the next hill. Predictably it behaved like a flycatcher, hawking insects and sallying out to pluck them from the road. We saw clearly the salmon pink belly, dark tail, dark brown upper with darker crest and lighter breast. The few days preceding the siting were dominated by warm south west and westerly winds. I could not get word out very well as I was on a "vacation' and had no internet access. The photos are poor because I used the running truck as a brace and I had accidentally turned off mi OS.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D3300

ISO

200

Focal length

500 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/8.0

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

960 pixels x 720 pixels

Original file size

289.21 KB