Phoebe Families

A-way back in the early months of 1998, my Little Dog (TM) Sparky and I moved into this house. Sparky proceeded to do what Little Dogs(TM) do and "mined" the lawn with Little Doggie(TM) land mines. The Little Doggie(TM) land mines proceeded to do what they do and started attracting flies. 

By the time the warm months of summer rolled around, we had more flies than we know what to do with. We kept the screens closed. Windows that didn't have screens were kept closed. Sparky used her doggie door which flapped closed almost instantly. But still, we got flies in the house. I set out fly traps that you can buy at places like OSH and Home Depot. I was capturing multiple full bags of flies every week in those things! And still they kept coming. (I decided that the traps were attracting flies from the next counties, so I quit using them after a couple of months.)

Well, that fall my household budget recovered sufficiently that I splurged and bought a bird-feeding apparatus. It's one of those modular devices that comes with a socket you screw into the ground, a pole that fits into the socket, and various formations of curved arms that you clamp onto the pole. From the curved arms, you can hang a wide variety of bird feeders: thistle feeders, tube feeders, suet feeders, ... 

Well, you can also hang a bird bath from a curved arm.  You can also get a "dripper" device that you can attach to a hose bib and run up the pole to position above the bath so that it slowly drips and keeps the bath full. (The dripping also keeps mosquitoes from laying their eggs in the bath.)

And that's what I did. Very soon, lots and lots of little birdies were stopping by for a drink and a bath after getting their fill of seeds. But other birds were also stopping by for a drink and a bath who were NOT there for the seeds! Even better, they were stopping by for a drink and STAYING for the bugs!

The next summer we had almost NO flies. We still had plenty of Little Doggie(TM) land mines, but very few flies outdoors and NONE indoors. Yay! 

The birds that helped the most in keeping the fly population down were the Black Phoebes. 

They perch on anything they can find to perch on and watch. Suddenly one will sally forth in a loop-the-loop path as though in a drunken stupor. Then you hear "SNAK" and it swoops back to a perching place as it gup-gup-gups a bug down its gullet. (If you don't hear the "SNAK," it probably didn't get the bug.) The photo above is of a young fledgling. Its mom & dad quit foraging for it a week or so earlier. 

I saw something the other day that heartened me. An adult phoebe was shopping around at the base of the bird bath. It was shopping, not for food, but for building materials! They use mud to bind their nests together and to the structure. For example, they build nests on a small shelf under eaves.

A pair of Phoebes built this nest under my front eaves a few years ago. You can just make out little football-shaped balls of mud against the blue. Those are about the size of the inside of a phoebe beak.

Here a new fledgling waits for mom or dad to return with a mouthful of bug. I'm happy to say that this is but one of three babies that fledged from a single clutch a few weeks ago.

I'm even happier to note that it looks like Mom & Dad are preparing a new nest for a new brood. At this rate, there won't be a flying insect to be found in these parts!