Photo: Eastern Phoebe, Andrea Hedblom/Audubon Photography Awards
Who’s That Bird Singing its Own Name?
Jessica Bigger
When you start hearing Eastern Phoebes (Sayornis phoebe) singing, it’s a sure sign that spring is finally here in Northern Virginia. These little brown and yellowish-white passerines are one of the few birds that sing their own name. So, if you hear that raspy two-part song “fee-bee,” start searching for this little tail-wagger perching on low tree branches.
Eastern Phoebe, Andrea Hedblom/Audubon Photography Awards
The Eastern Phoebe’s tail-wag is its signature calling card. Eastern Phoebes will perch on a low branch, bobbing their tail up and down. When it’s time to catch their prey, they move at lightning speed, snatch up their meal, and then fly right back to the same perch.
Like all flycatchers, Eastern Phoebe’s have a small thin bill perfectly designed to catch insects. They spend their time in open woods, yards, parks, and forest edges and nest under eaves of houses, barns, under bridges and also in caves. They tend to come back to the same nest year after year. However, sometimes a barn swallow will take up residence. As they are a solitary species, females will usually chase the male away after she has laid her clutch.
Yet, there is another flycatcher many birders will get confused with the Eastern Phoebe; that songbird is the Eastern Wood-Peewee. Not only are their names similar, but so is their song. So how do you tell them apart? In most cases you will hear a peewee, but rarely see it. They hang out in leafy forests. Phoebes on the other hand, will nest close to people, under the eaves of houses, barns and under bridges. The Eastern Phoebe has a raspier song and ends on a lower note, while the Eastern Wood-Peewee (Contopus virens) has a cleaner song which ends on higher note.
The Eastern Phoebe was the first bird species John James Audubon banded on his property in Mill Grove, Pennsylvania in 1803. He originally referred to the bird as the Eastern Peewee Flycatcher.
While Audubon and his then future wife, Lucy Bakewell were observing a couple of Eastern Phoebe’s nesting in a nearby cave, he declared his love to her. You could say that Audubon can thank the Eastern Phoebe for bringing him and Bakewell together.
After observing the physical change in the Phoebe’s eggs Audubon speculated about the egg’s structure and he wrote, “I believe, reader, that eggs soon lose this peculiar transparency after being laid―that to me the sight was more pleasant than if I had met with a diamond of the same size. The knowledge that in an enclosure so frail, life already existed, and that ere many weeks would elapse, a weak, delicate, and helpless creature, but perfect in all its parts, would burst the shell, and immediately call for the most tender care and attention of its anxious parents, filled my mind with as much wonder as when, looking toward the heavens, I searched, alas in vain, for the true import of all that I saw,” as described on the New York Historical Society website.
Sources:
https://audubon.nyhistory.org/eastern-phoebe-sayornis-phoebe-bird-banding/
https://www.audubon.org/news/is-phoebe-or-pewee-calling
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Phoebe/id