Eastern Phoebes Take the Stage

A pair of Eastern phoebes have built a nest on the patio under the porch. It's on a rolled up blind, the plastic kind that's made from hundreds of little hollow tubes laced together, and it's high up near the ceiling. Last year there were problems with a snake and a neighbor's cat getting into their nest, so this year I've done my best to make the area a snake free and cat free zone. Three have flown from the first brood and the second group of four nestlings are nearly on their own, too. Phoebes seem to enjoy being around people, and they have a reputation for nesting on buildings and bridges, close to where the action is.

Phoebes use mud to plaster their nest together and to anchor it to a support, in this case the rolled up blind. They are messy nest builders, not as bad as wrens, but not the neatest. However a phoebe nest is very durable, partly because they mix dried grasses and leaves in with the layers of mud, making it bricklike by the time they finish. The moss they carry and put on the inside and outside of the nest seems to root and grow in the mud, making it a clever camouflage as well as a perpetually soft lining. Both of these parent birds have shared in the nest building at my house, which is not typical. Sometimes they were both working on it at the same time with mud and moss. Books will tell you that phoebes are loners, but my yard and the edges of the surrounding woods are home to at least 8 phoebes this summer, plus who knows how many young.

Phoebes are in the flycatcher family. They perch on fence posts, tree limbs, and other high open places. They use these perches as vantage points to scan for insects. Phoebes are great mosquito hunters, and they also eat small moths and just about any other kind of flying insect. I often see them diving from atop the garden support poles, going after an insect with their aerial acrobatics and returning to their perch to watch for the next unlucky bug. I've also seen them under the nets that cover my blueberries, and they do eat some small berries occasionally. Phoebes also can hover in place when they're after a zig-zagging insect. A phoebe will wag its tail constantly when it perches, a habit that makes phoebes fairly easy to track as they fly about the yard and alight in different places.

Phoebes have a sweet, clear song that consists of the two syllables of their name. Sometimes they seem to stutter on the second syllable. Fee-bee, or fee-be-bee, or even fee-b-be-bee, and they repeat it over and over. They also have a quick little distress chirp. The juveniles do nothing but chirp and make their hungry baby noises, but within a day after they leave the nest, you'll see them on a fencepost proudly announcing their new found place in the world.

Audubon banded the first bird for his studies in 1804. He tied a small bit of silver thread to a phoebe's leg so he could watch for its return after winter migration.