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To show that our birds are unique, it is relevant to say that there are only two species of scissors-tailed flycatchers in North America, which have the genus Milvulus all to themselves. He is a sort of southern twin of our scissorstail. The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the neighborhood of country homes on the prairie.
It would not be safe to risk saying that the scissorstail always takes his bath in this way; but I know this one did. I once saw a kingbird doing the same thing, and so it may be a fashion in flycatcher circles. I am minded, in order to make this monograph more complete, to borrow a couple of paragraphs from Mrs. Bailey's "Handbook of Birds of the Western United States."
It must be remembered that the shrike himself makes a handsome picture on the wing, and when you come to mix up a scissorstail and a shrike in inextricable confusion, you have a feathery display worth seeing.
It was a year or two later that I saw a scissorstail performing his ablutions in the northwestern part of Arkansas. How do you suppose he went about it? Not in the way birds usually do, by squatting down in the shallow water, twinkling their wings and tail, and sprinkling the liquid all over their plumage.
Coues's "Key to North American Birds" is not accurate, for it represents our bird in the sitting posture with the tines of his fork spread apart. If the wings were outstretched, representing the bird in the act of alighting or shifting his position, the picture would be true to scissorstail life.
As his name indicates, our bird is the proud possessor of a genuine scissorstail, composed of two long, slender prongs that are spread far apart under certain conditions of flight. Let me describe the process minutely, for it is unique here in North America where fork-tailed birds are rare.
My friend and I were privileged to witness a rare and attractive scissorstail show, more gratifying than any circus performance. A loggerhead shrike suddenly appeared on the scene, and made an assault on the flycatcher. The two birds went gyrating, zigzagging, see-sawing through the air in a perfect jumble of white and black and ash.
My binocular was fixed upon him as he went flitting across the field and presently alighted on the ground. My surmise was correct; it was the scissorstail flycatcher, one of the most unique and handsome birds belonging to our American avifauna, one that merits more than a passing notice.
Nor was that the end of the exhibition, for in a moment a second scissorstail, the precise facsimile of the first, appeared from somewhere, and the two flycatchers combined against their enemy. Then for a few minutes there was such a chaos of shrike and scissorstail that we could scarcely tell which was which.
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