It's an Olive-sided Flycatcher!

Earlier tonight I was pulling weeds when I first heard the song - an unfamiliar but very distinctive three-note tune coming from high up in the trees behind our house. Needless to say, all weeding stopped. I scanned the trees with my binoculars - no luck. The song kept playing intermittently, fuelling my curiosity - which was quickly becoming a minor obsession. At one point I thought I saw a bird WAY UP in a distant tree but it was too far away to even know for sure that it was a bird, so I went in and got my scope. With that I could see the outline of the bird but it was too far away to make out the colouring or shape. But I noticed that it behaved like the flycatchers I had watched in Mexico, sallying out from the top of a tree to catch flying insects and returning to the same perch. Could it be a flycatcher? Here, on Gabriola?

Olive-sided Flycatcher
Photo by Dominic Sherony - CC License

I went in, got out my BC Bird Songs CD, and played all the tracks of flycatcher songs until - yes, that's it!! - an olive sided flycatcher! (It was kind of like finally being able to scratch a serious itch!) The song is described as sounding like "quick three beers" - with the emphasis on the 'three'.  You can listen to the song at http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Olive-sided_Flycatcher/sounds

At Cornell's All About Birds site I discovered that the olive-sided flycatcher, which comes to BC from South America to breed in the summer, is rated Near-Threatened by the IUCN.

If you live on the north end of the island, I hope that this post will save you the angst of trying to identify the unusual birdsong coming from the forest. Of course, it's possible there are olive-sided flycatchers on the south end too - has anyone heard or seen one??