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Updated: June 20, 2025
How I have delighted from boyhood to spend a summer day in this retreat, or take refuge there from a sudden shower! Always the freshness and coolness, and always the delicate mossy nest of the phoebe-bird! The bird keeps her place till you are within a few feet of her, when she flits to a near branch, and, with many oscillations of her tail, observes you anxiously.
One spring I observed with much interest a phoebe-bird building her nest not far from my cabin in the woods. The male looked on approvingly, but did not help. He perched most of the time on a mullein stalk near the little spring run where Phoebe came for mud. In the early morning hours she made her trips at intervals of a minute or two.
"I have one enjoyment this summer, which you cannot have in your city premises. The birds! not only their sweet songs, but all their little cunning manoeuvres in courting, building their nests, and rearing their young. I watched for hours a little Phoebe-bird, who brought out her brood to teach them to fly. They used to stop to rest themselves on the naked branch of a dead pear-tree.
First, those that repair or appropriate the last year's nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others. Secondly, those that build anew each season, though frequently rearing more than one brood in the same nest. Of these the phoebe-bird is a well-known example.
He tells of the phoebe-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying to hide it with moss in similar fashion to the way all phoebe-birds hide their nests when they are built among rocks. He tells of the highhole that repeatedly drills through the clap-boards of an empty house in a vain attempt to find a thickness of wood deep enough in which to build its nest.
But when the veery had flown with his heart-break to some distant copse, two song-sparrows came to persuade us with their blithe melody that life was worth living, after all; and cheerful little domestic birds, like the jenny-wren and the chipping-sparrow, pecked about and put in between whiles their little chit-chat across the boughs, while the bobolink called to us like a comrade, and the phoebe-bird gave us a series of imitations, and the scarlet tanager and the wild canary put in a vivid appearance, to show what can be done with colour, though they have no song.
Its discovery by myself and dog probably opened the door for ill luck, as one day, not long afterward, when I peeped in upon it, it was empty. The proud song of the male had ceased from his accustomed tree, and the pair were seen no more in that vicinity. The phoebe-bird is a wise architect, and perhaps enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest, as any other bird.
"For me, now, I would have sworn last week that I should be as perfectly happy as a phoebe-bird on a chimneytop if I could only get a John Smith of 1624, which I've been trying for so long. But I got it yesterday, and now I'm just miserable again." "You want something else?" queried Phillida, laughing. "Indeed I do. You see the splendid John Smith looks lonesome.
Now, as every teacher knows, wet feet never daunted any boy from achieving a purpose. The revolving chair swung around once more, the teacher arose from his comfortable perch and stooped very low in order to strike the trembling little boy who had heard the phoebe-bird prophesying spring, and had found the first hepaticas among the withered leaves and listened to the rippling song of the brook.
I have heard that these swallows, when ejected from their homes in that way by the phoebe-bird, have been known to fall to and mason up the entrance to the nest while their enemy was inside of it, thus having a revenge as complete and cruel as anything in human annals. The bluebirds and the house wrens more frequently come into collision.
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