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When the word “phoebe” comes up, most people automatically think of things like the outermost of Saturn’s known satellites, the Greek Titan-goddess of the moon, or the most fascinating and complex character from that happily departed sitcom, Friends. Anyone who has gone bird watching in North America, however, knows another kind of phoebe, a bold [...]

My first sighting of an Eastern Phoebe each year is, for me, when spring officially begins.  I finally got my first phoebe of the year yesterday, Saturday, 19 March, a mere eighteen days after the first phoebe of the season was reported in New York City.  I actually ended up seeing two examples of Sayornis [...]

The Black Phoebe is a familiar and confiding black-and-white flycatcher that can be found as far north as northern California and as far south as northern Argentina.  One of three birds in the genus Sayornis (the others are Eastern Phoebe Sayornis phoebe and Say’s Phoebe Sayornis saya), Sayornis nigricans is common across most of its range, [...]

It is the twenty-sixth of March.  By the calendar, spring has been here for nearly a week.  Red-winged Blackbird hordes have gone through, and the female red-wings are even thick on the ground.  Forsythia is flowering and daffodils are blooming all over the place.  I’ve watched my first Mourning Cloak butterfly for the year flutter [...]

While wood-warblers are a wonderful type of bird to watch they are not the only species making their way south each fall.  Everything sparrows to shorebirds are moving through and it would be a poor birder indeed who failed to notice the flycatchers.  Though silent Empidonax flycatchers will certainly drive at least some birders nuts [...]

Reports of the first Eastern Phoebes of spring have been popping up all over New York and this weekend, I decided I was going to find mine. Now that the bird watching balance is tipping back from the water to the woods, it was high time to renew my acquaintance with one of my favorite [...]