138 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



and through all the years of a long life I have always loved 

 to know this dear little bird as the pewee. With Lowell it 

 was otherwise, for did he not write? 



"It is a wee, sad colored thing, 



As shy and secret as a maid, 

 What ere in choir the robin sing, 



Pipes its own name like one afraid. 

 It seems pain prompted to repeat 



The story of some ancient ill, 

 But Phoebe! Phoebe! sadly sweet 



Is all it says and then is still." 



The pewee, or ornitholigically speaking, the phoebe, is 

 s:omewhat larger than the English sparrow. Its bill is of a 

 glossy black color and formed exactly like that of the king- 

 bird ; the plumage of the head is subcrested, and of a deep 

 brownish black ; iris of the eye hazel ; the upper parts of the 

 body are of a dark dusky olive ; wings and tail deep dusky, the 

 former edged with yellowish white and the latter forked and 

 widening remarkably toward the end ; whole lower parts of a 

 pale delicate yellow; legs and feet wholly black. The sexes 

 are alike in appearance, except that the crest of the female is 

 somewhat more brown than that of the male. 



The phoebe is a bird of North America whose range ex- 

 tends from Cuba and Mexico north through the Eastern 

 United States to Newfoundland and Manitoba and west to 

 eastern North and South Dakota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas, 

 the Indian Territory and western Texas. It winters south 

 from North Carolina to Cuba and Mexico. Many of them re- 

 main in Florida and the southern states bordering the Gulf 

 Coast during winter, but the majority pass beyond to Cuba 

 and eastern Mexico. It breeds from South Carolina northward 

 throughout its summer range. Its nest like that of the robin 

 is made of moss, grass and mud, and lined with hair and 

 feathers. Its nesting habits have been much modified. In 

 former times it was a wild bird, dearly loving a cool, wet 

 woodland retreat. There it hunted and bathed and there it 

 built its nest in a rocky bank or on a ledge of rocks. Hence, 

 its name, water pewee. Wilson tells us of one he found in a 

 cave five or six feet high, formed by the undermining of water 



