If you live near a wooded area in Chisago or Isanti County, and if you’re are fortunate, your summer days may be accompanied by the sweet, plaintive voice of the Eastern Wood Pewee. “Pee-o-wee” he says, “Pe-o.” Pewees are known to sing early and late, and all day long with scarcely a pause. Perched high in a tree and hidden from view—unlike its cousin, the great crested flycatcher – the pewee is best identified by his song. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Wood-Pewee/sounds
There are four flycatchers birders in our area can commonly expect to see while out in the field: eastern phoebes, least flycatchers, eastern wood pewees, and great crested flycatchers. If you venture into a marsh, you may hear an Alder Flycatcher.
A word about these flycatchers of east central Minnesota: at first glance, this family of perching birds, the Tyrannidae, appear to look so much alike that one could never sort them. Everyone is small, olive in color, with an eye ring and wing bars. All of these flycatchers hunt by sallying—that is, they sit on a branch, fly out to catch insets on the wing, and then return to their branch.
Paying attention to subtlety is key. Where is the bird located? Phoebes hang around human structures. Alder flycatchers live in marshy thickets. Great Crested Flycatchers, Pewees and Leasts can be found in forest fragments. Great crested flycatchers are colorful with rusty wind feathers and a pale lemon wash on the belly. Pewees lack an eye ring as do Phoebes. But Phoebes wag their tails incessantly, a reliable identifying mark. For the most accurate identification, however, learn their songs, because each species has a distinctive voice. For the sibling species Alder and Willow Flycatchers, song ID is the only way to tell them apart.
Eastern Wood Pewees overwinter in northern South America and perhaps in Central America, below 4,300 feet. They don’t sing in the winter—so the birds are difficult to ID on their wintering grounds and basic natural history is not completely known.
Pewees are one of the last of the long-distance migrators to return to summer breeding grounds. I always think that summer is upon us when I hear the pewee sing. The birds build cup nests of grass, and rootlets in trees about 15-70 feet off the ground. They camouflage the nest with bits of lichen so that it is very difficult to see. The female lays two to four eggs, and incubates them for 12-14 days. When the eggs hatch, the nestlings spend 16-18 days in the nest, fed by both parents before they fledge. One study looked at the number of sallies a pewee averages: non-breeding birds sallied out and back on average 36 times per hour. But a breeding bird made nearly double the number of trips—68 times per hour.
Because Pewees and other flycatchers rely almost wholly on flying insects, any insecticides that target them—like spraying for mosquitoes—decreases the amount of food pewees have accessible to maintain life and raise their young. Use of insecticides in farm fields and grassy lawns has been linked to starvation and pose a genuine threat to their existence.
The breeding season over, the Eastern Wood Pewee slips away in early September to return to the winter home. By mid-September, according to T.S. Roberts, only the stragglers are left.
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