Mrs. Red

Thirteen days after the male, on the same hillside. She is a red-breasted flycatcher too, and she has no red at all.

That is the ordinary condition of the species. Only the adult male wears the orange bib; the female and the young males go about in plain buff and brown, and between them they make up nearly everyone. She is barely the length of your finger, hunting the same way he does — a short sally out after something invisible, back to a chosen perch, the dark tail flicked up to show the white at its base.

She is also the harder bird to name. Her near-twin, the taiga flycatcher, winters on this same hill, and separating a female of one from a female of the other comes down to details you almost need the photograph to see: the pale base of her bill, the plain brown of the feathers above her tail. He gets the colour and the credit. She does the same crossing, hunts the same scrub, and leaves you to work for her name.