Western Kingbird

About the Western Kingbird

The Western Kingbird is the sentinel of every summer fence line in west and central Texas - pale gray above, lemon-yellow below, with a white-edged black tail that separates it at a glance from the look-alike Couch's and Tropical Kingbirds farther south. It sits high, flies out hard, and misses nothing that crosses its airspace.

Kingbirds earn the family name Tyrannus twice over: they sally from wires and treetops for grasshoppers, bees, and beetles, and they attack anything that approaches the nest - hawks, ravens, and cats get escorted off the property with loud, sputtering fury, the kingbird sometimes riding the bigger bird's back. A hidden crown of red-orange feathers flares during these battles and courtship, though it is almost never seen otherwise.

The species is a fixture of human landscapes, nesting readily on utility poles, cross-arms, windmills, and ranch buildings - infrastructure gave it perches and nest sites that carried it east across the plains during the twentieth century.

Western Kingbirds breed across roughly the western two-thirds of Texas, arriving in April, filling the air with squeaky, sputtering dawn song, and slipping south to Mexico and Central America by September. Every wire, windmill, and lone mesquite in ranch country seems to hold its pale gray silhouette in summer.