{"id":230,"date":"2010-05-13T09:38:51","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T13:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/?p=230"},"modified":"2010-05-13T09:38:51","modified_gmt":"2010-05-13T13:38:51","slug":"eastern-phoebe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2010\/05\/13\/eastern-phoebe\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastern Phoebe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fee’-bee!\u00a0 Fee’-bee!<\/span> You are probably hearing this buzzy song of the Eastern Phoebe in your neighborhood now.\u00a0 These flycatchers spend the winter in the southeastern United States and return to our area to breed.\u00a0 It’s good to have them back!<\/p>\n

Unlike most flycatchers that have a single, stereotyped song, Eastern Phoebe males sing a second song.\u00a0 The essence of the song can be captured as Fee\u2019-b-be-bee.\u00a0 In both songs, the first note is exactly the same.\u00a0 For the Fee\u2019 bee song, the second note is raspy.\u00a0 The second portion of the Fee\u2019-b-be-bee song is not as harsh and seems like stuttering.<\/p>\n

Don Kroodsma found that Eastern Phoebe males alternate the two song types when they are singing at a high rate (about 40 songs\/minute).\u00a0 At 25 songs\/minute, only three of four songs are Fee\u2019-bee songs.\u00a0 Males sing virtually only the Fee\u2019-bee song if the singing rate falls below 20 songs\/minute.\u00a0 The pattern is clear; the reasons for the pattern are unknown.<\/p>\n

Eastern Phoebes are easy to identify.\u00a0 They have the upright stance of flycatchers as they sit on their perches.\u00a0 The head is dark brown with dark eyes.\u00a0 Phoebes lack the conspicuous light eye-ring of many of our flycatchers.\u00a0 The upperparts of the body are olive-brown, slightly lighter than the head.\u00a0 The wings have no wingbars.\u00a0 The throat is white and the rest of the underparts are a buffy-white.\u00a0 A distinctive behavior of Eastern Phoebes is their tail-wagging.\u00a0 The tail is rapidly flicked downward and then slowly raised to its original position.<\/p>\n

Eastern Phoebes like habitats that are only partly enclosed.\u00a0 Suburban yards, roadsides, stream banks and orchards are all good habitats.\u00a0 Within their nesting territories, phoebes have several perches that they habitually use.\u00a0 A phoebe will sit on its perch, looking for an insect in flight.\u00a0 When a potential meal is seen, the phoebe will sally forth and grab the insect in flight, returning to a perch.<\/p>\n

These birds seem particularly fond of beetles although wasps, ants, grasshoppers and flies are taken on the wing as well.\u00a0 Sometimes, millipedes and spiders may be taken from the ground.<\/p>\n

Nests of Eastern Phoebes are cemented to a vertical surface and are made of an outer layer of mud and a softer, inner lining of grass and other soft materials.\u00a0 Before European settlement, Eastern Phoebes probably nested on cliffs and ledges.\u00a0 As Europeans colonized eastern North America, Eastern Phoebes easily adapted.\u00a0 They now readily nest on rafters and under the eaves of our houses and barns.\u00a0 In the 19th<\/sup> century, common names for the Eastern Phoebe\u00a0 were Barn Pewee and Bridge Pewee.<\/p>\n

Phoebes will use the same nesting site from year to year, often building the new year’s nest on top of the old one.\u00a0 Their faithfulness to a nesting site was first shown by John James Audubon who tied some silver wire to the legs of nestling birds captured at their nesting site in Pennsylania.\u00a0 Sure enough, two birds returned to the same area the next year.\u00a0 Aubudon was apparently the first bird bander in North America!<\/p>\n

Audubon\u2019s results were fortunate ones.\u00a0 Other biologists have shown that Eastern Phoebes are seldom faithful to the area where they were hatched and fledged (the natal site).\u00a0 In Indiana, none of 3,594 nestlings were found in the area in subsequent years.<\/p>\n

Like most perching birds, adult Eastern Phoebes do show strong fidelity to a nesting site.\u00a0 Nearly 90% of pairs use the same nest site for second clutches.\u00a0 The fidelity from year to year is equally strong.\u00a0 Lots of other birds show similar behavior with low natal site fidelity and high nesting site fidelity.<\/p>\n

Eastern Phoebes are industrious parents.\u00a0 It is normal for a pair to raise two broods in a summer.\u00a0 Each brood usually has five babies, although broods as high as eight have been reported.\u00a0 Unfortunately, phoebes are often the victims of female Brown-headed Cowbirds which lay a cowbird egg in a phoebe nest, fooling the phoebes into raising a greedy cowbird chick along with their own chicks.<\/p>\n

Data from the Breeding Bird Survey (begun in 1966) indicate that Eastern Phoebe populations are holding their own.\u00a0 The overall density of this species is highest in the New England states.<\/p>\n

The species winters from Virginia to Texas and eastern Mexico.\u00a0 The center of the wintering population is in eastern Texas and the panhandle of Florida.<\/p>\n

The replacement of square concrete culverts and small wooden bridges with circular, corrugated metal pipes has made such sites unusable for nesting.\u00a0 Biologists have discovered that flat nesting platforms placed in circular culverts are readily accepted as nest sites by Eastern Phoebes.<\/p>\n

[originally published on April 4, 2010]<\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fee’-bee!\u00a0 Fee’-bee! You are probably hearing this buzzy song of the Eastern Phoebe in your neighborhood now.\u00a0 These flycatchers spend the winter in the southeastern United States and return to our area to breed.\u00a0 It’s good to have them back! Unlike most flycatchers that have a single, stereotyped song, Eastern Phoebe males sing a second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[429,433,420],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}