Scarcely had I hung up the phone than there it was! A friend and I were out birding and we had just driven into a local park when my sister called. Perhaps it was that the warmth of a sunny Southern California February day would squeeze its way east through the ether to Boston where she lives, but she said she just wanted to see what was up. I had the speaker phone on, so the three of us chatted about what birds we had already seen and where we were heading now. I joked that we were out looking for a Vermilion Flycatcher, a bird that is scarce in our neck of the woods. My sister said she better let us get on with our search, then, and signed off.

It might have been as much as ten seconds, but there one was—a gorgeous male Vermilion Flycatcher, not fifty feet from the car and right beside the road. We were not going fast enough to come to a screeching halt, but you get the idea. We were out of the car in no time, cameras up and following the bird as it swept off its perch to snatch an invisible (to us) insect and fly right back again. I don’t know how many photos we took, but this was a very obliging bird, so it was a lot. As we birded the park, it turned out that there were at least three of them, one a female. Though not as flashy as the males, she’s still a beautiful bird. And just as hungry.

When I began birding fifty-some years ago, one had to go to riparian areas in the desert, like Morongo Valley, to find a Vermilion Flycatcher. Perhaps they had once been in the Los Angeles basin, but were driven out by land conversion. Only in recent years has suitable habitat reestablished itself in the local parks where these flycatchers are increasingly seen. Who knows, they may even choose to nest here soon! Wouldn’t that be a red-letter day?