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Tuesday, January 18, 2000
Sighting of Eastern phoebe is backyard 'freeebieee'
Country-loving, yellow-breasted flycatcher makes uncommon winter stop in suburban garden
Hanging out beneath my bathroom window this morning was an unexpected bird, an eastern phoebe. My reliable old yard continues to provide surprises. It has messy corners, also big trees, and flowering shrubs. It is a bird friendly urban lot. The phoebe is a dark-backed bird with a yellow breast, no white wing bars, and flycatching propensities.
The Eastern phoebe is a bird we see every winter, but usually not in urban yards in Corpus Christi. It prefers country roads, and scrubby open places around old farmhouses. It gives a birder every possible clue because it says its name. "Feeebeeee!" is what it says, but not in winter. The other giveaway: It wags its tail. Strangely, most birds we see here are eastern forms. A line divides the United States down the middle, and birds on one side of the line are eastern, while those on the other side are western forms. This line is actually the 100th meridian, where the tall grass prairies meet the drier short grass plains to the west of it. The ecological line is not a complete barrier and some birds move back and forth. If you are buying a field guide that is designated "eastern" or "western", go for the eastern. Our screech owl, for instance, is the eastern form.
This hardy flycatcher, the Eastern phoebe, likes to be near water. It summers and breeds in woody country with streams and rocky ravines. In winter, it flies south to us. John James Audubon picked the eastern phoebe for his first bird-banding experiment. He twisted silver wire around the legs of a family of phoebes for easy identification when they returned the following year.
Phoebes are counted in every local Christmas Bird Count. In the 99th count last year, Flour Bluff yielded 127 phoebes while 485 were tallied in the Corpus Christi count the same year. According to "Birds of the Texas Coastal Bend, Abundance and Distribution," by Rappole and Blacklock, both male and female birds hold winter territories. No bird carries the name Western phoebe.
I am not the only in-town birder who has been favored this winter by a visit from an Eastern phoebe. Joyce Jarmon who lives on Retama Avenue near Oak Park, tells me she and her son, Jake, have been converting the family swimming pool into a pond.
"We didn't swim in it anymore," she said, "so we decided this would be a good use for it." Birds apparently are in agreement, and have been flocking to enjoy it. One they had not immediately identified, proved to be an Eastern phoebe, complete with jerking tail, she said.
This column was scrutinized last week and found wanting by long time birder Tom Ammerman. He called on the phone to ask, "Phyllis, didn't you see any American kestrels last week?" He was correct, we had, but I had omitted them from the list. Mid-week I received a postcard from him: "Surely you saw a shrike!" Right again, Tom. Thanks for adding two obvious birds to our new new millennium list.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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