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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 tale, observes you anxiously.
Which is the greater knowledge to be able to feel spring open in your heart on hearing the phoebe-bird, or to glibly repeat six times eight? Our attention was drawn to a crowd of young and middle aged men idly leaning against posts or sitting on benches in the shade of trees at the famous roque court at a village in Ohio.
One season a phoebe-bird built on a projecting stone under the eaves of the house, and all appeared to go well till the young were nearly fledged, when the nest suddenly became a bit of purgatory. The birds kept their places in their burning bed till they could hold no longer, when they leaped forth and fell dead upon the ground.
Now it comes silently along on the top of the rock, spread out and flowing over that thick, dark green moss that is found only in the coldest streams; then drawn into a narrow canal only four or five feet wide, through which it shoots, black and rigid, to be presently caught in a deep basin with shelving, overhanging rocks, beneath which the phoebe-bird builds in security, and upon which the fisherman stands and casts his twenty or thirty feet of line without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple.
Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by each of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his monotonous note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation of man.
Another April bird, which makes her appearance sometimes earlier and sometimes later than Robin, and whose memory I fondly cherish, is the phoebe-bird, the pioneer of the flycatchers. In the inland farming districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter Day, proclaiming her arrival, with much variety of motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay-shed.
By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the phoebe-bird. The fine snow becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene. During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens. Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis.
There is room for it also in the deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. Its relative, the phoebe-bird, builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock.
There is room for it also in the deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. Its relative, the phoebe-bird, builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock.
By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the phoebe-bird. The fine snow becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene. During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens. Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis.
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