A pair of Eastern Phoebes once again occupied the nest tucked under the eave of our cabin on Lake Superior. The nest is at least twenty years old, and may be much older. I’m assuming the same pair, or children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc. are in residence. Each year the birds make necessary home repairs, perhaps considerable. Though protected by the eave, it faces the lake and undoubtedly gets hit with wind, snow and rain.
Phoebes are some of the first songbirds to return in the spring, and they depart late in the fall, overwintering in southern North America. In Birds of Minnesota, Roberts lists a latest-observed date of Nov. 3, 1923. Ninety percent of its diet consists of insects, so it might seem that the phoebe is taking risks by arrival in March, when sudden snow storms are not uncommon. Indeed, many perish under punishing spring conditions.
But those that survive have their pick of nest sites. These are most often attached to human-constructions such as houses, barns, sheds, under bridges, and atop rafters. Natural sites include amid the tangled roots of overhanging banks and on cliff ledges. Roberts observed that the face of Barn Bluff in Red Wing housed numerous nests.
Phoebes are prolific for songbirds. A pair double nests each summer, with clutches of three to six white or occasionally speckled eggs. Our cabin phoebes were incubating eggs in early June. In mid-July when we were in residence, they were commencing Round Two. Incubation is 16 days; the nestlings leave the nest in 16-20. When we returned in August, the phoebes were still bringing tidbits to the kids. The next day, the birds that had seemed to be everywhere, were gone. The young had fledged and we didn’t hear or see another phoebe for the remainder of our stay.
In his book, Roberts tells of encountering a nesting pair in an abandoned farmhouse on the shore of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis in April, 1879. Twenty-one at the time, Roberts watched the bird carry nesting material through an opening in a broken pane of glass. He followed the bird into the house. A trail of bits of moss and mud let up the stairs to an upper hall, and then to a back bedroom, where the bird had built, or tried to build, a nest at intervals along a rack with clothes hooks. Three days later, Roberts returned to find the bedroom door had shut and now the bird was trying to build on a window ledge in a first-floor room, a site that had previously failed for the bird. When it failed again, the phoebe chose a site in a stove-pipe cut-out between two rooms and here it was successful in completing a nest.
Roberts concluded in his journal, “Certainly a most strange freak had entered these peewee’s heads!”
We humans are most fortunate to have phoebes who choose to live near us. From them we can learn the care taken in preparing for a family, the demands of being a parent, and the difficult job of being a bird.
photo credit: Wikipedia, Eastern Phoebe in Madison, Wisconsin
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