Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

About the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher is one of the most elegant birds in North America - pale pearl-gray with salmon-pink flanks and wing linings, and a black-and-white forked tail that can double the bird's length. The tail streams behind in flight and scissors open and shut as the bird maneuvers.

Scissor-tails hunt from fences and wires in open country, dropping on grasshoppers and beetles or taking insects in graceful aerial chases. Males perform a spectacular sky dance in spring - climbing, tumbling, and somersaulting with the tail flared. Late-summer evenings they gather in pre-migration roosts that can hold hundreds.

This is THE bird of Texas ranch country: a common breeder statewide from March into October, decorating fencelines along nearly every rural road.