30 
THE CONDOR 
I Vol. lY 
The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher in Texas. 
FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY. 
I N visiting the prairie country of 
of southern Texas, the scissor-tail was 
one of the first new birds that I 
noticed, and his forceful originality 
made him the last to seem common or 
uninteresting. If you see him first 
perched on the chaparral you are struck 
by his long white tail and glistening 
black, white, and salmon plumage. In 
perching the tail is closed thin and the 
black of the wings contrasts well with 
the bright salmon sides. He sits (juietly 
like any every day bird giving only an 
occasional bee-bird note till suddenly — 
up he darts into the air, and with de 
lighted wonder you watch his odd fig ure 
and odder gyrations in the sky. 
One of his favorite performances is to 
fly up and, with rattling wings, execute 
an aerial seesaw, a line of sharp angled 
VYVVVYs, helping himself at the 
short turns by rapidly opening and 
shutting his long white scissors. As he 
goes up and down he utters all the 
while a penetrating bee-bird scream 
ka-quee’ — ka-quee' — ka-quce' — ka-quee' — 
ka-quee' , the emphasis being given each 
time at the top of the ascending line. 
Frequently when he is passing along 
with the even flight of a sober minded 
crow and you are quietly admiring the 
salmon lining of his wings, he will 
shoot rattling into the air and as you 
stare after him, drop back as suddenly 
as he rose. He does this apparently 
because the spirit moves him, as a boy 
slings a stone at the sky, but fervor is 
added by the appearance of a rival or 
an enemy, for he is much like a Tyran- 
nus in his masterful way of controlling 
his landscape. 
The head of a family we saw on the 
Nueces River one day was guarding 
his mate at the nest when another 
scissor-tail invaded his preserves. The 
angry guardian flew at him in fury, 
chasing him from the field with a loud 
noise of wings. At the first sound of 
combat the brooding bird’s head ap- 
peared above the nest and hopping up 
on the rim she watched the chase with 
craned neck till the intruder with her 
lord and master close at his heels faded 
into white specks in the blue. 
Another day we saw a scissor tail in 
pursuit of an innocent caracara who 
was accidentally passing through the 
neighborhood. The slow ungainly 
caracara was no match for the swift- 
winged flycatcher and with a dash Mil- 
vulus pounced down upon him and ac- 
tually rode the hawk till they were out 
of sieht. 
The flycatcher’s long feathery tail 
gives it such a light airy, not to say 
ethereal appearance that the heavy role 
of pugilist seems most unbecoming, but 
such a flying apparatus doubtless sug- 
gests much mischief. If a slow-winged 
Chondestes starts after an insect and 
by bustling along at its best can only 
just keep even, what more natural than 
that a swift-winged onlooker should 
swoop down and with one beat of the 
wings pass over the head of his labor- 
ing neighbor and snap up the bug 
from under its bill? And what more 
natural than for him to give a chuckling 
twitter and a shake of his tail as he sails 
off leaving his crest-fallen brother to 
drop heavily to the ground? Such a 
shocking performance was witnessed 
close to the court house — the hall of 
justice, alas! — in Uvalde; for the scissor- 
tails while as free as Texas rangers on 
the prairie, make themselves as much 
at home as mayors and aldermen in the 
towns. In San Antonio and Austin 
they are to be seen perching on tele- 
graph wires and fences as complacently 
as English sparrows. 
The powerful flight of Milvulus is 
useful not alone in social matters but in 
the small affairs of life. Mr. Bailey 
once saw one bathe on the wing in the 
deep water of the Concho River. The 
bird swooped down, struck the surface 
of the water with his breast and glanced 
