On a sunny morning in early spring a few years after we’d moved into our modest stone cottage here on the riverbank, a sudden burst of nearby birdsong caught my ear.

I was in the living room, precariously balanced atop a low footstool, straining to reach an elusive volume on the highest shelf of the tall corner bookcase.

Phoebe! I thought, immediately recognizing the singer. A new species for our homestead list!

How can I be so specific about the time and details?

Because upon hearing that bird cut loose, the sound, blasting through the opened screen slider, was so loud and close, the bird seemed to be in the room with me!

Startled, I immediately whirled around, pitched off the stool, stumbled when I landed, tried to catch myself…and fell topsy-turvy over the recliner.

Incidents of near-death klutziness tend to stick in your mind.

I ended up sprawled upside-down, half in the chair, half on the floor. Battered, bruised, and already dreading the soreness I knew would follow. But also, thankful not to be furnishing a line in my obituary regarding how “his untimely demise involved a flycatcher-provoked misadventure.”

The phoebe whistled again. I gingerly and painfully rolled over, stood, and limped to the windows for a look.

It took about ten seconds to spot that phoebe sitting atop a cast-iron shepherd’s crook we use to suspend one of our bird feeders. The metal pole is mounted to the handrail on the narrow wooden deck overlooking the river and a basin-shaped hole below the big riffle which we refer to as the Cottage Pool.

It’s a typical flycatcher perch, elevated and open, overlooking a prime feeding area.

Phoebes—and flycatchers in general—are master insectivores; skilled aerial hunters. They invariably select such ambush sites to wait and watch for the next tasty bug to come flying along.

In addition to the shepherd’s hook, phoebes situate themselves on the deck rail itself, or the ends of any limbs and branch tips that afford a good view of this productive hunting area.

It takes them but a couple of seconds to launch, swoop, and nab their prey in midair—a maneuver so precise and gracefully choreographed, it seems more an aerial ballet than an act of meal-garnering bushwhacking.

Phoebes—or to be more ornithologically field-guide proper, Eastern phoebes—are smallish, kind of nondescript little flycatchers. In many articles and book intros to the flycatcher family, you’ll find descriptions containing such terms such as “bland,” “drab,” “muted,” “mundane,” or “unremarkable.”

Authors seeking to impress you with their scholarly erudition might erroneously opt to call the flycatchers, including phoebes, “monotypic.”

Being partial to flycatchers in general—and particularly phoebes and pee-wees, their lookalike cousins—I bristle at such patronizing terminology.

Yes, all the flycatchers are kind of nondescript and confusingly similar. But I like their looks, and instead view phoebes as neat and trim, “dapper,” almost modestly formal in dressy tones of gray and brown, beige, cream, black, and white.

A fluffed-up phoebe sometimes shows a head and dark, extended crest which might look rather oversized. I like that, too.

I’ll be the first to admit my birding skills aren’t the best. Even so, I observed that initial phoebe from one of our river-view windows, and no more than a couple of yards away.

But I didn’t have to see that practically in-my-lap phoebe to identify it—hearing had been sufficient. Phoebe identification is easy because the bird’s call phonetically announces its name: “Fee-bee!…fee-bee!…fee-bee!”

A bright, two-part song, brief and musical.

“Fee-bee!…fee-bee!…fee-bee!”

Sung a dozen times a minute. Maybe a bit raspy, and somewhat nasal, but unmistakable, nevertheless. “Fee-bee!…fee-bee!…fee-bee!”

Moreover, that first bird’s performance was accompanied by the usual phoebe quirk of tail-wagging. This phoebe characteristic, to bob and wag their tails repeatedly, is a tell-tale mannerism, and has spurred some to define them as “the flycatchers with a dancing tail.”

That original phoebe also stayed and became a seasonal resident. Moreover, a female soon turned up. The pair built a sturdy sick-and-mud nest at the pointed, angle-end peak of our overhanging roof—16 feet above the deck, maybe twice that high above the Cottage Pool’s surface.

The male remained in residence to sing and chase bugs throughout the summer. The cast-iron shepherd’s crook or a nearby sycamore branch became his daily singing and hunting perch.

While a phoebe may be small, it doesn’t lack courage or aggressiveness. Should a bunch of swallows decide to feed over the Cottage Pool, they’d learned to give that feisty phoebe plenty of upstream leeway, otherwise the little flycatcher vented his anger by swooping straight at their heads as they zipped along.

And he connected or came close often enough that they often relented and relinquished the Cottage Pool to his fierce territorial demands. I’ve even watched the plucky phoebe dive-bomb hawks, both red-tails and Cooper’s.

Since the year that the original bird showed up, phoebes have become dependable seasonal residents—appearing in the late spring and departing in early fall.

Not likely the same birds, but this is obviously a premium phoebe hangout. I presume whoever arrives first gets to lay claim for the season.

Every year the nest at the peak of the eaves is refurbished and used. The Cottage Pool always provides ample insects to feed any new family—mayflies, caddis flies, et cetera. An easy, tasty, and dependably at-hand daily banquet.

Six feet away from where I’m currently pecking away at my keyboard, there’s a phoebe sitting on that same old shepherd’s crook, singing his heart out, bobbing his tail, and watching for the next hapless bug to come fluttering over the Cottage Pool.

And I’m both blessed and happy to be sharing these phoebe days once again.

Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].