62 Twelve Months With 



phoebes seem less numerous of late years, perhaps 

 because .the old fashioned wooden bridges have 

 been replaced by steel and concrete, and they are 

 not so often seen near houses and barns, except in 

 the country districts. They arrive in April, and 

 usually begin nesting about the first of May. 

 Their nests are frequently infected with vermin of 

 various sorts, which sometimes kill the young 

 birds, and this may account for their building a 

 new nest when rearing a second family. They are 

 not noted for meticulous housekeeping. 



In addition to the phoebe, which is perhaps the 

 most common of our flycatchers, we have the 

 wood pewee, the Acadian, Traill's and least fly- 

 catchers, all of which are demure, drab-colored 

 birds with quiet, plaintive notes. The wood pewee 

 also "pipes its own name" even more distinctly 

 than the phoebe, a mournful, delicate whistled 

 "pee-a-wee" which may be heard at all hours 

 almost any day in the shady woods in May, or 

 indeed all through the summer, when other birds 

 are silent. Trowbridge has honored him with 

 these verses : 



"For so I found my forest bird, 



The pewee of the loneliest woods, 

 Sole singer of these solitudes, 

 Which never robin's whistle stirred, 



Where never blue bird's plume intrudes. 

 Quick darting through the dewy morn, 

 The redstart trilled his twittering horn, 

 And vanished in thick boughs: at even, 



