(_Sayornis ph[oe]be_) Flycatcher family
_Called also:_ DUSKY FLYCATCHER; BRIDGE PEWEE; WATER PEWEE
(Illustration facing p. 75)
_Length_--7 inches. About an inch longer than the English
sparrow.
_Male and Female_--Dusky olive-brown above; darkest on head,
which is slightly crested. Wings and tail dusky, the outer
edges of some tail feathers whitish. Dingy yellowish white
underneath. Bill and feet black.
_Range_--North America, from Newfoundland to the South
Atlantic States, and westward to the Rockies. Winters south of
the Carolinas, into Mexico, Central America, and the West
Indies.
_Migrations_--March. October. Common summer resident.
The earliest representative of the flycatcher family to come out of
the tropics where insect life fairly swarms and teems, what does the
friendly little ph[oe]be find to attract him to the north in March
while his prospective dinners must all be still in embryo? He looks
dejected, it is true, as he sits solitary and silent on some
projecting bare limb in the garden, awaiting the coming of his tardy
mate; nevertheless, the date of his return will not vary by more than
a few days in a given locality year after year. Why birds that are
mated for life, as these are said to be, and such devoted lovers,
should not travel together on their journey north, is another of the
many mysteries of bird-life awaiting solution.
The reunited, happy couple go about the garden and outbuildings like
domesticated wrens, investigating the crannies on piazzas, where
people may be coming and going, and boldly entering barn-lofts to find
a suitable site for the nest that it must take much of both time and
skill to build.
_Pewit_, _ph[oe]be_, _ph[oe]be_; _pewit_, _ph[oe]be_, they contentedly
but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the
neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter,
and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair
and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the
labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let
off superfluous high spirits or to catch a morsel on the wing, and
with many a vivacious outburst of what by courtesy only we may name a
song.
When not domesticated, as these birds are rapidly becoming the
ph[oe]bes dearly love a cool, wet woodland retreat. Here they hunt and
bathe; here they also build in a rocky bank or ledge of rocks or
underneath a bridge, but always with clever adaptation of their nest
to its surroundings, out of which it seems a natural growth. It is one
of the most finished, beautiful nests ever found.
A pair of ph[oe]bes become attached to a spot where they have once
nested; they never stray far from it, and return to it regularly,
though they may not again occupy the old nest. This is because it soon
becomes infested with lice from the hen's feathers used in lining it,
for which reason too close relationship with this friendly
bird-neighbor is discouraged by thrifty housekeepers. When the baby
birds have come out from the four or six little white eggs, their
helpless bodies are mercilessly attacked by parasites, and are often
so enfeebled that half the brood die. The next season another nest
will be built near the first, the following summer still another,
until it would appear that a colony of birds had made their homes in
the place.
Throughout the long summer--for as the ph[oe]be is the first
flycatcher to come, so it is the last to go--the bird is a tireless
hunter of insects, which it catches on the wing with a sharp click of
its beak, like the other members of its dexterous family.
* * * * *
Say's Ph[oe]be (_Sayornis saya_) is the Western representative of the
Eastern species, which it resembles in coloring and many of its
habits. It is the bird of the open plains, a tireless hunter in midair
sallies from an isolated perch, and has the same vibrating motion of
the tail that the Eastern ph[oe]be indulges in when excited. This bird
differs chiefly in its lighter coloring, but not in habits, from the
black pewee of the Pacific slope.