“That is why the everyday birds that live about our homes are so precious and should be so carefully guarded. We never see them grow old, and so they help us to keep young in heart.
“Phœbe belongs to a very important family, that of the Flycatchers, songless birds with call-notes that are distinctive; these take their food upon the wing, diving from a perch into the air for it as the Kingfisher dives into the water for his. In this way the flycatchers are among the most valuable of the Sky Sweepers.
“Among Phœbe’s cousins you will find the Kingbird, who wears a slate-coloured coat and white vest, a crest on his head, and a white band on the end of his tail by which you may know him, as he sits on a fence rail, stump, or even on a tall mullen stalk and sallies out into the air, crying a shrill ‘Kyrie-Kyrie!’ The Great Crested Flycatcher, with an olive-brown coat, gray throat, and yellow belly, who builds in a tree hole well above the ground, and uses dried snake skins among his materials when he can get them, is another relative, and the largest of the family; while a third is the little Wood-pewee, of the dark olive-brown coat and two whitish wing-bars, who saddles his lichen-covered nest, as dainty as that of a Humming-bird high up on a limb, and calls his plaintive note, Pee-wee-pee-a-wee peer,’ through the aisles of the deep woods, as constantly as Phœbe lets her name be known in a more shrill and rasping voice to the barnyard flock.
“These and several other flycatchers do not come to us until May, but the Phœbe of all his tribes trusts his livelihood to the care of gusty March. Perhaps it is the early return that makes the Phœbe so friendly and causes it to choose either a site by the water or near a house. Insect life awakes much more quickly in gardens and about the farm-yards, or near open running water, than in the remote woods; for certain it is that no other member of the family is so easily domesticated.
“The Phœbe not only eats the earliest insects that appear, but it has peculiarly constructed eyes, like the Whip-poor-will and Night Hawk; it can catch its food until the end of twilight, so that it kills many bugs that hide all day. Among the hurtful insects that it catches are the click-beetle, brown-tail moth, canker-worm moth, and the elm beetle. As a berry-eater no one can find fault with it, as when late in a dry season it takes a little fruit, wild berries supply the need.
“All this should be a hint to us to leave a few nooks about the place for a pair of Phœbes to appropriate for a homestead; a little shelf under suitable shelter is all they ask, or, better yet, nail a few wide braces under the roof of a wagon, cattle, or wood shed, even if it does not need supporting. Then, before the first Robin or Chipping-sparrow awakens, when the first flush of light penetrates the darkness of night, you will have a home sentinel at hand to cry, ‘Phœbe! I see, all’s well!’ to the morning, and at evening she will blend her voice with the Whip-poor-will’s in wishing you good night, for though Phœbe is early to come in the spring and early to rise in the morning, she goes late to bed and meets the bats in the sky during her evening excursions.”
“Maybe Phœbes don’t really sing, but they think they do,” said Tommy, as Gray Lady looked in vain in her scrap-book for a poem that should do the bird justice and be catching in rhythm.
“Sometimes in May they get up on the roof or the telephone wire or something like that, and tumble somersaults into the air and cry ‘phœbe-phœbe-phœbe-phœbe,’ on and on and on and over again, like the Katydids and Katydidn’ts in the maples at night, only the Phœbe is so worked up she can only think of her own name.”
“Then this verse of Lowell’s at least is true,” said Gray Lady, closing the scrap-book.
“Phœbe is all it has to say