‘Oh, Wow!’—Stunning Photos Offer First Known Proof of Vermilion Flycatchers Fishing

Capturing a rare behavior is the highlight of any nature photographer’s day in the field, but capturing a behavior that has never been documented before? That’s a whole different level.

Arizona photographer Jeffry Scott unknowingly achieved the latter this past September while photographing Vermilion Flycatchers at a local Tucson park. Vermilions—small, vibrant birds that reside in the U.S. Southwest—are often found around water and known for typical flycatcher behavior: sallying from a perch to catch bugs midair or from the water’s surface. But, as far as experts can tell, never has one been formally observed—much less photographed—actively catching fish. 

“It’s something I kind of took for granted,” Scott says of the behavior. But once he began posting his photos in a Facebook bird photography group, “I kept getting a lot of pushback that it was fish.” Despite the sharpness of Scott’s images, some folks  just couldn’t believe their eyes. 

Scott, a former professional newspaper photographer who now enjoys birding and wildlife photography in his spare time, began documenting Vermilion Flycatchers and Black Phoebes—another Southwestern flycatcher with similar habitat and hunting preferences—in 2020. Scott says he first photographed the phoebes catching and consuming tiny minnows, a documented though seemingly rare behavior for the species. But the Vermilions proved elusive. 

​“I started out photographing the Vermilions and Black Phoebes at a little park near me called Fort Lowell Park,” he says. “That’s where I first saw the Black Phoebe catch a fish, so I assumed that it was just one of their patterns of behavior. I never could confirm it was a fish with the Vermilion until I started photographing at El Rio Preserve in Marana.” ​​​​​​

At El Rio, a birding hotspot with a lush riparian zone, Scott says the phoebes and flycatchers are easier to view and photograph. And this past fall, he was finally able to identify what the Vermilions were catching when they quickly dunked their spiky crests below the water’s surface. “Since then, most of the time when they dive into the water, they’ve been bringing up fish,” he says. 

While Black Phoebes are known to occasionally fish, there is little written about the behavior—and it appears to be entirely unverified for Vermilions. The only known published observations of Vermilion Flycatchers eating fish were made in 1995 by Brenda Andrews and Marie Sullivan in an issue of the Wilson Bulletin. In the short report, the two detailed their experience just outside of Phoenix watching Black Phoebes catch and eat fish. But they only ever witnessed the Vermilions consuming—never catching. “It was unknown if the flycatcher captured or scavenged the fish,” they wrote. Andrews returned to the same location separately and observed a Vermilion engaging in what looked like fishing behavior, but the bird was unsuccessful in its attempts. 

According to Cin-Ty Lee, a flycatcher expert who is currently co-authoring a new series of field guides on the family, to his knowledge this is the first time the behavior has been documented for Vermilions. (“Oh, wow! Wow, wow,” was Lee’s first reaction to seeing the photos.)  “I’ve never seen this in a Vermilion Flycatcher or Black Phoebe, but they are picking off insects and tiny lizards all the time,” he says, noting that both species pounce on prey as much as they fly-catch. “So I can see any prey that is visible on the surface or maybe even in the water, they might pick up.” 

Kenn Kaufman, a renowned bird expert and Audubon magazine’s field editor, agrees that the behavior is novel and that Scott's photos seem to be the first real documentation of the birds fishing. But he also notes that the discovery isn't totally shocking considering other, larger flycatchers sometimes fish. “The Great Kiskadee is known to include small fishes in its very varied diet,” he says. “So the capacity is established in the family.” Both Black Phoebes and Vermilion Flycatcher spend so much time around the water “that it would seem a little surprising if they didn’t occasionally partake of tiny fish,” he adds. Still, this behavior seems to be “very rare” for Vermilions, says Kaufman. 

Noting that the observations made in the 1995 paper took place in the same general area of Arizona, Lee is curious if this method of feeding is regional. “Maybe this is local, maybe this is learned,” he says. 

Of course, given how understudied the behavior is, there’s also the chance that it is actually common and widespread among Vermilions and, for that matter, Black Phoebes. Unless catching fish is a relatively new development for either species—and there’s no reason to suspect that it is, says Kaufman—it’s possible that the action happens so fast and the prey is so small that people just haven’t realized what they were witnessing. Scott credits his digital camera and tight image crops for being the only way he could identify the birds’ meals. 

“By the naked eye or even binoculars, there’s no way you could really confirm what they’re catching,” he says. “One would just assume that, Oh, they’re flycatchers, so they’re probably just catching bugs off the water. But the advent of these relatively affordable, long telephoto lenses—and the autofocus systems now, and the higher resolutions of the cameras—gives us an opportunity to maybe see some of the stuff that you wouldn’t catch just by watching a bird.”

Fishing isn't the only fascinating Vermilion Flycatcher behavior Scott has captured. In August he photographed something at Fort Lowell Park that took him by completely surprise: A female Vermilion nabbed a small lizard off the ground and proceeded to kill and eat it. “That one shocked me. I had never seen that before,” he says. “I saw it fly up to the tree with something, and when I was able to get around to get an angle on it, I said, Holy cow, that’s a lizard! And it beat the heck out of that thing, just thrashing about.”

Though Vermilions and Black Phoebes are known to eat small vertebrates like lizards, the evocative images Scott took show the value of close and routine observation when trying to capture surprising moments and behaviors. “I really approach birding like I do a news story,” he says. “If you want to do more than just bird-on-a-stick type photography or identification type photography, it takes time and patience and just really learning about the subjects.” 

In addition to the fishing, Scott says he has also observed the Vermilions engage in a courting behavior that doesn’t seem to be well-documented: With their mouths wide open, males will fly by a perched female and “buzz” her multiple times. Such discoveries are exactly what he loves about bird photography.  “Nature’s always full of surprises,” he says. “As much as we know, there’s so little that we know, especially when it comes to more common species that aren’t studied to death.” For his part, Scott plans to continue observing and photographing his local Vermilions to see what else he can learn. “They’re so fun to photograph and such a challenge, and they’re one of my favorite little birds,” he says. “They’re just such a treat.”