Yesterday we were treated with a nice performance of an Eastern Wood-Pewee, feeding two juveniles in our front yard. This small flycatcher is present every year in our woods but I have never seen more than one at a time. Their song, a slurred “pee-ah-wee” or their call, a shrill “p-e-e-e-e-e-“ makes it easy to locate them between the leaves.
They sally out from an exposed perch to capture flies, bees, butterflies, wasps, and beetles and often return to the same perch. This makes it more predictable for the photographer. We had some rain and the adult pewee found plenty of insects near the ground for its offspring.
Another flycatcher, the Eastern Phoebe, looks very similar, but the pewee has a yellow base on its lower mandible while the phoebe’s bill is all dark. Another way to distinguish the two species is looking at their behavior on the perch. The Eastern Phoebe pumps its tail and the wing bars are less distinctive.