Ash-throated Flycatcher

On 17 June, a cloudy, rainy day, I headed to the Kmart Ponds on the north edge of Helena to check on a Wilson's snipe nest that I had been monitoring. While walking toward the nest site, a largish flycatcher that was an unfamiliar Montana bird for me flushed from some weeds in front of me and perched not too far away. I quickly got my binoculars on it and its size, very light chest and abdomen along with a darkish, crested head quickly lead me to the conclusion that I had something special. The bird looked familiar to me and I guessed that it might be a flycatcher more commonly found in the SW part of the country, an Ash-throated Flycatcher, which I had observed in Arizona a number of times.

It is a rare occasion that the camera I habitually hang over my shoulder does not have my large telephoto attached. But on this occasion, I had a different, less powerful lens because I was checking on the snipe nest. But I took some photos anyway, and along with the mental notes I had taken, I returned to my vehicle to take a look at my bird field guide. The combination of the photo images and my mental notes supported my initial tentative assessment that this may indeed be an Ash-throated Flycatcher. Enlarging the images on my home computer convinced me that this was the correct identification. An inquiry of the Montana Bird Database revealed that there were 11 previous records for this species in Montana, but only two of those records were after the 1970's. So this was indeed a pretty rare sighting in the state. But the observation must first be reviewed by the Montana Bird Records Committee before it becomes official

I quickly got the word out on our Montana Birding listserve - the MOB - and a number of folks came looking for the bird over the past week or so. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, only one other person was fortunate enough to relocate the bird, although I sighted it on 3 of 4 occasions that I looked. This is the last picture I got of this rare Montana bird.