Bird of the Month: Eastern Phoebe

Eastern Phoebe. Photo by Colin Dobson.

By Roger Digges, CCAS Vice-President

April’s bird of the month is the first member of the flycatcher family I’ve introduced in this series, flycatchers getting their name from specializing in catching insects on the fly. Like another flycatcher, the Eastern Wood Peewee, you can identify the Eastern Phoebe when it says its name. Unlike the wood peewee’s melodious pee-uh-wee, the phoebe’s call is a hoarse fee-bee. Once you hear it, you never forget it.

While, as new birders, we tend to identify birds by the colors and patterns of their plumage, it is helpful to also build a knowledge of bird songs and calls. As I once told a group of teenage birders, “Remember when you’re looking for birds that they don’t want you to find them. To them, you’re a giant predator.” Which means you will hear far more birds than you can see.

While the variety and sheer volume of birdsong can be overwhelming at times, particularly in the spring, the Eastern Phoebe’s distinctive raspy call stands out.

So, where can you find phoebes? You will usually spot these common flycatchers in open woodlands, often at the edge of the woods, near water, and usually not far from human structures. Before people began creating houses and barns with eaves, decks, bridges, and other covered environments, phoebes nested underneath rock edges to shelter from the weather. Today you are likely to find them using our homes and other covered structures for nesting. Most years I have found them near all three steel bridges at Meadowbrook Park, and often near the farmhouse.

To spot a phoebe, follow that distinctive call and/or look for a small bird perched on an outside branch or twig of a tree. It will be grayish above, whitish below, with no white bars on its wings, no white ring around its eyes, and a head darker than the rest of its body. Like all flycatchers, a phoebe will come and go to the same perch. Unlike any other flycatcher, phoebes have the habit of “pumping” their tails up and down while perching.

Once she has chosen a safe and dry site, it will take the female phoebe five to fourteen days to build a nest out of mud, moss, and leaves mixed with grass and animal hair. She will lay two to six eggs, which will hatch in a little over two weeks, and the nestlings will stay in the nest for two to three more weeks.

While you can’t attract phoebes to your yard by offering them food, you can create habitats that attract the kind of flying insects they eat. On the website allaboutbirds.org you can also find out how to build phoebe-sized nesting structures in your yard.

Because Eastern Phoebes coexist with people so well, their numbers have remained stable, with an estimated population of 35 million individuals. However, we should continue to work on preserving habitat for and reducing pesticides that kill flying insects to keep the phoebe population strong.