The Bay of the Band 
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 phcebe 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, Se 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 
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