Empidonax wrightii
Gray Flycatchers are small flycatchers with gray to olive-gray upperparts and light gray underparts, long tails with white outer edges, white eye rings and pale wing bars. Gray Flycatchers are known for repeatedly twitching their tails up and down while perched.
While I was out in the West Desert of Utah yesterday I thought about my friend Billy Fenimore and his family as I photographed this adult Gray Flycatcher.
As it turns out this flycatcher gave me a wonderful behavioral clue that made identifying it a little easier for me because I watched it wag its tail slowly up and down repeatedly while perched which Gray Flycatchers are known to do.
As I watched the Gray Flycatcher it flew towards me, snatched a damselfly from mid air then landed on a dead branch not too far away and proceeded to eat it while I photographed the bird.
It has been gray for a couple of days and it supposed to be gray until this front passes and while gray days can get me down gray birds lift me back up.
Gray Flycatchers are generally found in sagebrush and arid busy habitats so it was a real treat to see this one in the marshy habitat of the refuge.