Tropical Kingbird in Maine!

There’s nothing better to pull a birder out of the mid-summer doldrums than hearing about a major vagrant that’s popped up nearby! Yesterday morning that happened to me when word went out across the Maine rare bird text alert about a Tropical Kingbird discovered in York County, southern Maine! I launched out of bed and hit the road down to the Saco River Reservoir to see for myself!

This Tropical Kingbird was reported to the birding community by Tara Lynne who said that it has been at the Skelton Boat Launch near the dam at the Saco River Reservoir since late June according to her husband, Pete Yeackel who has seen and photographed it there was didn’t confirm it was usual until recently.

This is the 3rd Maine record, with the 1st at Scarborough Marsh on Oct 30-31, 1915 and the 2nd in East Machias on Oct 29, 2019. The 2019 record was only seen by the original finders, and so this current sighting is the first real chase-able record for Maine birders, and the bird *is* continuing as of Friday, July 19th! Hopefully it sticks around for the weekend warriors!

Per usual, Doug Hitchcox re-found and officially confirmed (with vocalizations) that it was indeed a Tropical (vs Couch’s or other yellow-bellied kingbird) on the morning of the 18th, but it went missing from ~8:15am until it popped back up in some snags below the dam at 9:45am – luckily Lauren and I were on the scene and we had great views as it moved to the telephone wires and treetops along the dirt road! It was on constant alert, and was very successfully hunting and eating many aerial insects the entire time! It even called once for us too – giving the classic excited, sputtering twitter confirming Tropical over Couch’s.

David Sibley commented that, “Judging from the photos this bird is a good match for an austral migrant Tropical Kingbird from South America!! [S]ubspecies melancholicus [by the] dark wing coverts, lots of gray on the throat, molt timing.”

It could be that this bird arrived in the Northeast last fall due to reverse misorientation (as many South American Fork-tailed Flycatchers have), but was only discovered this summer. There are ~15 other Jun-Jul records for eastern North America versus ~45 for Aug-Nov, ~4 for Mar-May, and ~7 for Dec-Feb.

I’ve posted on this blog about a vagrant Tropical Kingbird before – back in the fall of 2023, New Jersey’s first-ever Tropical Kingbird turned up in Cape May Point and Lauren and I were there to see it! That bird was a juvenile, whereas this Maine record is a molting adult.

Anyway, even in this July heatwave it can still pay to try and get out birding – even just checking any random local patch near your house! You never know what rare bird might be hiding out there!