migrates only because he is a flycatcher, and is thus 

 compelled to. The earliest spring day, however, that 

 you find the flies buzzing in the sun, look for phoebe. 

 He is back. The first of my birds to return in the 

 spring is he, often beating the bluebird and robin by 

 almost a week. It was a fearful spring, the spring of 

 1904. How phoebe managed to exist those miserable 

 March days is a mystery. He came directly to the 

 pen, as he had come the year before, and his pres- 

 ence in that, bleakest of Marches made it almost 

 spring. 



The same force and promptness are manifest in 

 the domestic affairs of the bird. The first to arrive 

 that spring, he was also the first to build and bring 

 off a brood, or, perhaps, She was. And the size of 

 the brood of the broods, for the second one is now 

 a-wing, and there may yet be a third ! 



Phoebe appeared without his mate, and for nearly 

 three weeks he hunted in the vicinity of the pen, 

 calling the day long, and, toward the end of the sec- 

 ond week, occasionally soaring into the air, flapping 

 and pouring forth a small, ecstatic song that seemed 

 fairly forced from him. 



These aerial bursts meant just one thing : she was 

 164 



