When I come to this place in South Eastern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border, I have driven roughly 5 hours to get here, and so I am usually up to bigger things like a 10,000K+ sandhill crane migration, and I am not primarily focused on the little things, although always open to opportunity of the awesomeness of Nature, big or small, and often demonstrate how little difference there is between two. This time however, I'm here specifically for this little guy. Prior experience here informed me that his digs are along the way to one of the locations where I sometimes shoot the cranes, so I will go see if I can spot him first before I get busy. Indeed, I believe I've visited with this specific bird and his mate three times in as many years, and always within the same tree, or within 50 yards from it, either southerly or westerly. Alas, when I heard the familiar sound of the 'pit pit pidddrrrreeedrr' fly by and catch my attention, I knew that it was going to be a decent day.

When I first visited the place a few years ago, I had been focused on the cranes, as well as a Northern Harrier hawk flying about causing havoc from time to time, and still hadn't fully walked the place. A nearby photographer came on the scene and talked to his friends that were nearby about how lucky he was to see a 'vermilion flycatcher' two ponds over. Done with the scene, I inquired from my eavesdropping to get more information, which wasn't much more, other than he was near a certain intersection of walking paths. I eventually made my way over there, walking slowly with hyper awareness, and caught my first glimpse of him after 5 minutes, and he led me to his mate. Over the next day and half, I made time to visit with them three times, each time paying careful attention to behaviors and flight patterns and favorite perches.

The following year when I returned, I had gotten bored of the cranes and the scenes were not awesome for the light I had, so remembering those flycatchers I wondered if they might be around again. I found them in the area I looked, but it took a little longer as they were spending time further down the path to the south. With a couple of hours to kill, I indulged myself on them, gently following them along their daily pattern, which did involve the area I worked with them last. At this point, stitching together all of my observations from that trip and the previous, I had put together a pretty solid and semi-predictable pattern on them and their local habitat range.

This newest trip however, I was already in South Eastern AZ working the Chiricahua mountains, and had a half day to kill before looping back home, so I was already close. This time the trip was just for the flycatchers, and the cranes were secondary. I walked straight to 'our' spot in 3 minutes, when he flew by with his greeting, making time for me again. Not having lots of time, I took advantage of the poses and wished him good travels, and he did the same while flying by one last time as I was making my way to walk the rest of the loop for other usual suspects.

Am I lucky? Maybe so, due to initially being clued into them from eavesdropping years before. But more of this story honors my true feeling about luck, being the sum of opportunity and preparation. The only luck here is that he and I are still alive, which I guess means we both have been favored with "bien viaje".

The Hispanic locals call this bird “bien viaje” — literally meaning "good travel" — but often it is just simply translated as the 'good luck' bird. Found throughout South America and southern North America, it is usually considered good fortune to see this bird and have him facing you aware of your close proximity, a good omen; keeping his back towards you, a bad omen.

As aerial insectivores, they catch their prey while flying, and prefer riparian habitats and semi-open environments. Flycatchers are constantly scanning their surroundings for flying insects and they tend to keep an eye out for big mammals like people, so more times than not the birds are looking your way, and so good luck (when preparation meets opportunity) is bound to follow you.

On a spiritual level, the vermilion flycatcher is symbolic 'of the little things in life'. Their spirits are highly aware of everything going on in their surroundings, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. They tell us that everything that’s happening to us is part of a bigger plan, and we should dismiss nothing as unnecessary. There has to be a meaning behind it; you have to pay attention to these things, and you will never be caught by surprise. Indeed, that message and energy is exactly what I was doing in each encounter with him, collecting many different and sometimes disparate observations, presuming they are not meaningless or by chance, and stitching together a larger predictable pattern of behaviors. Whatever, let's just call it the 'luck of the little things in life'.