BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 225 



iig. Sayornis phcEbe (Lath.). 

 Phcebe. 



Common transient visitor and not uncommon summer resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



March 18, 1903, one seen, Lexington, W. Fa.xon. 



March 25 — October 10. 

 November 15, 1878, one taken, Belmont, C. \V. Townsend. 



NESTING DATES. 



April 28 — May 10. 



According to NuttalP a pair of Phoebes nested in the boathouse at the 

 Fresh Pond Hotel in 183 1, and Lowell in 'My Garden Acquaintance' mentions^ 

 the species in terms which indicate that it continued to breed at Elmwood 

 up to about 1868. Mr. C. F. Batchelder writes me that "in the middle or later 

 '6o's a pair nested for at least two or three seasons, in spite of much disturbance 

 (that caused them to desert their eggs once or twice), under a rough piazza roof 

 at the back of our house" on Kirkland Street, Cambridge. As recently as 1898, 

 Mr. Walter Deane observed a pair which had a nest on the timbers of a bridge that 

 spans one of the artificial ponds in Mount Auburn. On May 28, 1869, I found 

 a nest with two eggs, built among the roots of a fallen tree in the Pine Swamp, 

 and I have seen a few nests which were placed beneath the eaves of icehouses 

 on the shores of Fresh and Spy Ponds. 



During the earlier as well as later years of my experience, however, the 

 Phoebe has never occurred commonly within the present limits of the city of 

 Cambridge, excepting at its seasons of migration when I used to meet with it 

 very frequently in the fields and orchards bordering Fresh Pond and Vassall 

 Lane as well as in the neighborhood of the Cambridge Cemetery and Mount 

 Auburn. It has also been seen, at these seasons, in Norton's Woods. Through- 

 out the farming districts of Belmont, Arlington, Lexington, Watertown, and 

 Waltham, it still breeds rather commonly, although by no means so generally 

 and numerously as it did thirty or forty years ago. 



1 T. Nuttall, Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. The Land Birds, 

 1832, 280-281. 



!> J. R. Lowell, Atlantic Almanac for 1S69, 1868, 37. 



