Cooperative Living July 2017 - 37

FeatheredFriends | Story and Artwork by Spike Knuth, Contributing Columnist
Eastern Wood Pewee
T
he cool depth of a summer forest
has little air movement and is
often beclouded with tiny flying
insects. This may not be ideal for a
hiker or fisherman, but it's good for the
forest-dwelling birds that depend on
insects for food.
Anyone who has walked in a
summer woods has heard one of those
forest dwellers. It's a common sound
even on the hottest, muggiest days.
However, a woodlands sojourner is
probably so busy swatting mosquitoes
and flies that he or she may never
pay attention to the distinctive, drawn
out, " peee-ah-weeeee " call. The eastern
wood pewee is a common flycatcher
of Virginia's summer woodlands, and
is a bird that sings its name!
It's another one of those birds that
we are more apt to hear than see.
Unless you're tuned in to its call, you
may not notice, but it is a common
sound all summer long. Sometimes it
follows up its long song with a simple,
questioning " du-weeee? "
While we are fighting off the biting
insects, the wood pewee is hunting
them. It moves about the woodlands
quietly when feeding. It may suddenly
appear, as if out of nowhere, usually
sitting on a dead branch, like the
lower dead limb of a pine, about midlevel
in the forest. Such was the case
as I sat in the cool shadows of woods
along the Bullpasture River near
Williamsville, Virginia.
The little pewee appeared sitting
quietly on a barren limb just above me.
Suddenly it darted out at a flying insect
and with an audible snap of its bill,
caught the insect in mid-air and with
fluttering wings returned to its gently
rocking perch. In fact, this habit has
resulted in the nickname " dead-limb
bird. " It will sit patiently, like a deer
hunter on a stand, waiting for its
quarry to come by. Each time an insect
flies by, the pewee flies out quickly to
snatch the insect out of the air in typical
flycatcher fashion.
www.co-opliving.com
'DeadLimb'
Bird
The
eastern wood pewee is a common flycatcher and is a bird that sings its name!
The wood pewee arrives in Virginia in
late April or early May about the same
time the colorful spring warblers begin
filtering through the greening landscape.
Wood pewees are found statewide,
mainly in dense, mature, mixed forests,
but also in orchards, parklands and open
groves of scattered trees, especially near
streams or lakes. Pewees sit very erect,
with wings drooping slightly.
Like all flycatchers their heads seem
too large and their bodies very slim. The
pewee has shorter legs and longer wings,
proportionately, compared with other
flycatchers. Its scientific name is
" Contopus virens, " meaning " shortfooted "
and " being green. "
Color-wise, it is a plain-looking bird.
It has dark-olive or grayish-olive
upperparts, with its head being darker
and more brownish. Its underparts are
yellowish-white, with a wash of olivegray
on its breast. It measures 6 to 61
⁄2
inches in length. Its larger cousin, the
It will sit patiently, like
a deer hunter on
a stand, waiting for
its quarry to come by.
Each time an insect
flies by, the pewee
flies out quickly to
snatch the insect out
of the air in typical
flycatcher fashion.
eastern phoebe, is similar but the
pewee shows a pair of dull-whitish
wing bars. Other similar but smaller
flycatchers (Acadian, alder, least and
willow), have discernible white eye
rings that neither the pewee nor
phoebe have.
The pewee returns to the same
woods and often the same branch to
nest each year it survives. It builds its
nest on a horizontal branch near or
over an off-shooting branch, about 12
to 24 feet up, although sometimes as
low as 6 feet or as high as 60 feet. The
compact structure is constructed of
grasses, root fibers, bark strips and
moss, then camouflaged with lichens
and held together with spider silk.
The nest resembles that of a
hummingbird, although larger. The
nest is lined with fine grasses and
animal hair. It ends up looking like a
big, flattened knot on the branch.
Normally, two to five eggs are laid,
cream-colored with blotches and spots
of dark brown and lilac forming a
wreath at the large end. Typical of
flycatchers, these birds aggressively
defend their nests. Egg incubation
takes about two weeks and both
parents are involved in the feeding
chores. Two broods are often reared
in a year, with the second brood
fledging by the end of August.
Over 90 percent of this little
flycatcher's diet consists of insects.
It feeds on bees, wasps, mosquitoes,
ants, caterpillars, spiders, grasshoppers,
borers, beetles and - you guessed it
- flies! Later in the year it may also
eat wild berries, notably poison ivy
and dogwood.
With reproducing duties complete,
pewees become silent as summer turns
to fall. They begin leaving Virginia in
mid-September along with migrating
warblers, and by mid-October all have
moved south. They winter in Central
America and in northern South
America from Nicaragua to Columbia
and Peru. 
July 2017 | Cooperative Living | 35
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living July 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living July 2017
