Figure 348. In the Great Crested Flycatcher’s circumscribed pattern of vagrancy to California, four-fifths have occurred between mid September and mid October; the rest fall between 4 September and 2 November.

 

Figure 349. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Great Crested Flycatcher’s mean rate of detection in the state stood at 1.4 per year, a value that dropped to 0.9 per year for the more recent period (1990–2003). Contrast this pattern with that of the Dusky-capped Flycatcher (see Figure 346), which was found much more frequently during the 1990s than it was during the two preceding decades.

 

Figure 350. In California, the great majority of Great Crested Flycatchers have been found along the coast between mid September and mid October. The timing and location of this first-fall bird—6 October 1980 on Southeast Farallon Island—could hardly have been more typical (1987-199; Keith Hansen).

 

 

 

 

 

 

GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER Myiarchus crinitus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Accepted: 45 (82%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 10	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 2	Color image: none

This large flycatcher’s northern breeding limit extends from east-central Alberta east to southern Nova Scotia. The southern breeding limit reaches from south-central Texas eastward along the Gulf coast to the Florida Keys, with a likely disjunct population in northeastern Coahuila (Urban 1959). The species winters in central and southern Florida and from southern Mexico south to northern South America. Vagrants have strayed as far as south-central Alaska, southwestern British Columbia, the northern Northwest Territories, southern James Bay, Newfoundland, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Baja California Sur (NAB 56:110), Puerto Rico, and Ecuador.

California’s first Great Crested Flycatchers—one collected and a second bird measured, photographed, and released—both reached Southeast Farallon Island on 25 September 1967 (DeSante and Ainley 1980). The species has since occurred as a casual to very rare fall vagrant to the state’s central and southern coasts. A bird found on 13 October 1978 in Arcata, Humboldt County, furnished California’s only record north of Sonoma County. Only one record in ten (5 of 45) comes from the interior, all from the Mojave Desert. Records span the period from 4 September to 2 November, with 80% (36 of 45) having occurred within the narrower span of 16 September–14 October (Figure 348). Vagrant Great Crested Flycatchers are notorious for being “one-day wonders”—less than a quarter of California’s (11 of 45) have lingered longer. All birds reliably aged have been in their first fall, and none has shown characters that would be expected of a fall adult.

Detection of Great Crested Flycatchers in California during most falls since the first records in 1967 presumably reflects increased understanding of how to identify Myiarchus flycatchers, along with increased observer coverage of coastal vagrant traps during fall migration (see Dunn 1988, Heindel and Patten 1996). Figure 349 shows that the Great Crested Flycatcher—unlike the Dusky-capped (see Figure 346)—was detected more frequently during the 1970s and 1980s than it was during the 1990s and early 2000s.