The Phoebe {Sayomis phoebe) 

 By Edward B. Clark 



Length : About 7 inches. Distinguishing marks are the dusky brown color, 

 dark brown cap and white margined outer tail feathers. 



Range: Lives mainly in the east. Breeds from about middle Canada south 

 to northeastern New Mexico, central Texas, northern Mississippi and mountains 

 of Georgia ; winters from south of latitude 37 degrees to southern Mexico. 



Few of our birds have won a more secure place in our hearts than plain 

 little phoebe, who has no pretensions to beauty of plumage or excellence of song. 

 For this its confiding disposition and trusting ways are responsible, and many 

 a farmer listens for its familiar voice in early spring and welcomes it back to 

 its accustomed haunts under the old barn. Originally building its nest on the 

 face of cliffs, the phoebe soon forsook the wilds for man's neighborhood, and 

 year after year apparently the same pair returns to the identical rafter in the 

 barn, the shelter of the porch, or the same nook under the foot bridge which 

 they have claimed for their own for many seasons. The insistent call of "phoebe- 

 phoebe" is as familiar as the pipe of the robin. 



The phoebe has further claims to the favor of man since it is one of the 

 most useful of birds, living almost wholly on insects, among which are many 

 noxious kinds, as May beetles, click beetles, and several species of weevils, 

 including the boll weevil and the strawberry weevil. As if reluctant to leave 

 their northern home, many phoebes remain with us till late fall, and individuals 

 may be seen lingering in sheltered places in the woods long after other fly-catchers 

 have started for the tropics. 



The robin and the bluebird are called harbingers of spring. They are noth- 

 ing of the kind. The phoebe is spring's real harbinger. The phoebe belongs to 

 the family called flycatchers, and this means that it lives entirely upon a diet of 

 winged insects. Now, winged insects are not abroad in cold weather. When 

 they appear early spring appears with them, and at the same instant comes the 

 phoebe. When the phoebe leaves for the South in the fall we may know that 

 warm weather is over, for it will not leave as long as its food supply is buzzing 

 about in the sun. So it is that the phoebe marks the coming of one season and 

 the passing of another. 



The phoebe's call is one of the plaintive sounds of nature, and were it not 

 that in early spring every call of the wild seems to hold something of cheer, the 

 bird's note would seem to express a settled melancholy. Later in the year, when 

 the green is gone and the north wind is beginning to feel its strength, the sorrow 

 in the phoebe's note smothers its sweetness. The bird is dressed like a gray nun, 

 and with somber tones in voice and garb it may seem more than passing strange 

 that the phoebe is so well known and so well loved of men. 



The phoebe's confidence in its human neighbors has gained it a place in their 



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