Great Crested Flycatcher
Myiarchus crinitus
Great Crested Flycatcher · Staten Island · 5 July 2026
A Great Crested Flycatcher at eye level on Staten Island, which is worth having, since this is a bird of the treetops, more often heard than seen: a loud, rising "wheep" from the canopy of the eastern woods, where it spends the summer sallying out for insects. Not the wren it was first written up as.
Grey breast, lemon-yellow belly, a rusty wash in the wings and tail, and the crest that names the species, here only half raised. One of the few flycatchers that nests in holes, and it lines the cavity with, among other things, a shed snakeskin.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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