phoebe

They also recognized acorn woodpeckers, a California towhee, dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead, a dark-eyed junco, a mockingbird, an Anna’s hummingbird and a black phoebe.

Eastern phoebes are an early nesting species and may have traditionally had their first brood before competition from later-nesting house sparrows, he explained.

On an apple bough, the phoebe teeters and wags its tail and says, “Phoebe, phoe-bee!”

They pulled off the road and gathered around a cellphone to watch an illustration of an Eastern phoebe’s migration travels over the course of a year.

I watched two black phoebes fly away from the ribbons fluttering in their direction, clearly disgusted by my decorating choices.