Sayornis phoebe
Order Passeriformes
Family Tyrannidae
Subfamily Fluvicolinae
Adult.— Upper parts grayish-brown; head dark brown; no conspicuous wing-bars; throat and breast grayish; belly pale yellowish; sides dark.
Immature.— Wing-bars more distinct, and the under parts yellower.
Nest, composed largely of moss, placed on a beam or rafter in a shed or under a bridge, and in less settled regions on a ledge of rock.
Eggs, white.
The Phoebe is a common summer resident throughout New York and New England. It arrives late in March or early in April, and lingers into October. It is common about farm-buildings, sitting often on the ridgepole, but it also shows a marked fondness for the neighborhood of water.
The name Phæbe suggests the song, pheel-wi or phee’. wi-wi, hoarser than the pure whistle of the Chickadee, and with much more snap than the drawling note of the Wood Pewee. The Phæbe has also a chip, and about its nest a curious chattering cry. It raises two broods in the northern states, and the song is therefore heard well into July; after the moult in late summer the song is often heard again. In early spring the Phæbe occasionally utters a flight-song, beginning with whits and running into phobes rapidly repeated.
The sideways sweep of the tail is a characteristic action by which the bird may always be identified; in the old birds the absence of wing-bars also serves to distinguish it from the Wood Pewee. Young birds have dull wing-bars, but they cannot refrain long from making a suggestive movement of the loose-hung tail.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)