Cassin's Kingbird - Region 8

Typical Range

Below is a single observation of a Cassin's Kingbird taken by Tony Leukering on the Smith Point Hawk Watch, Chambers County, on October 23, 2012. The kingbird first appeared to be a Cassin's Kingbird in Tony's scope (1st image). Cassin's Kingbird is a Trans-Pecos specialty and is not well-documented from the Upper Texas Coast. Tony's narrative below will further explain the sequence of images.

"Bird of the Day: About 9.:35, I noticed a yellow-bellied kingbird popping over the NW motte and perching with a small handful of Euro Starlings. I got the scope on it and, yowzer, a Cassin's! I thought that it might be a reasonably "good" bird here, so snapped a few very distant pix of it. I then checked the eBird database for the county and noted no records in that extensive database, so I really hoped that it would come a lot closer. I figured that I had gotten at least identifiable pix of it."

"but I wanted better; a lot better, and I told the bird so. Fortunately, about that time, a foraging Northern Harrier kicked all the birds off the top of that tree."

"and the kingbird headed straight for the platform."

"It kept coming, so I kept shooting it."

"until it was nearly point-blank (it's looking right at me here)."

Photos (and accompanying narrative) by Tony Leukering

Cassin's Kingbird - Chambers Co., October 23, 2012. First known photo-documentation of Cassin's Kingbird on the Upper Texas Coast. Very few written observations.