As July wanes and migratory songbirds complete their nesting rituals, many of them vocalize less. However, one plain 6-inch bird that flies all the way from South America to nest in the Midwest sings even in the middle of hot summer days.
To hear one sing while walking my neighborhood or in a natural area with oak trees at the end of July makes me melancholy and yet, it is also a reassuring sound.
A pewee is a flycatcher, and that family of birds can be difficult to identify by their plumages alone. Luckily for the human ear, the pewee gives a plaintiff, slurred, melancholy song reminiscent of its name. “Pee-wee,” it sings. “Pee-a-wee. Pee-urrrr,” it may continue. At dawn and dusk, the male sings a longer song with many more phrases, and rising and falling notes.
Each year, we first hear the eastern wood-pewee sing in spring when it arrives to breed. Birders often say: “Have you heard a peewee yet? It’s time for them to be back.”
A straight shot from Ecuador to Chicago is more than 3,000 miles, but that involves flying over a large patch of the Atlantic Ocean. To avoid that route, a pewee will fly farther than that on its one-way trip, starting from northwestern South America, flying north through Central America and eastern Mexico and then north and east to the Chicago area. It makes the reverse trip on the way back. The eastern wood-pewee only weighs about half an ounce, which is equal to half of a standard-sized eraser.
That’s a remarkable feat, and ever since I’ve been a birder, I’ve relished hearing the pewee sing in spring, as well as on hot summer days.
The scientist in me wants to know why this particular species sings late in the breeding season when many others are silent. Perhaps it is because the pewee needs to teach its young how to sing. Some birds learn songs innately; others need to hear it from their parents while in the egg or after hatching.
But that’s just a guess, and not much research has been done on this particular subject. All I could find in the literature is that red-eyed vireos, which also sing all day long, may do so because that’s when they have less competition with other songsters.
It’s fun to watch this olive-colored bird with a couple of narrow white bars on its wings, a dark eye and orange bill fly out from an exposed perch on a tree branch to snatch an insect in the air.
After grabbing its prey, the bird returns to the same perch and waits for more insects to fly by, such as gnats, butterflies, moths, wasps and bees.
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My first intimate encounter with a pewee was years ago when I was volunteering for a breeding bird atlas project. We were to document the bird species as a possible, probable or confirmed nester. Hearing it sing in the same tree at least a week apart meant it was possibly breeding there, but finding it building a nest or sitting on a nest or feeding young meant it was confirmed.
A pewee builds an open cup nest of grasses and plant fibers, and uses spider webs to attach lichens to the top; the lichens help camouflage the nest. The pewee builds the nest 30 feet or higher on a horizontal branch of a deciduous tree well away from the trunk.
The volunteer breeding bird project encouraged me to stand still, be quiet, watch and wait. Patience was rewarded when a pewee flew to and from the same spot in a tree with nesting material, which it placed on what looked like a little brown knot on a tree branch.
To describe the feeling of finding a nest of a bird that flew thousands of miles to the very tree you are standing under is not easy. It’s way more than satisfaction or even joy. It’s perhaps how you feel when you hear your most favorite part of a beautiful song with string accompaniment.
Each year, when attending a family reunion at the end of July, I walk into the adjacent woods to listen for pewees. Without fail, I hear the pewee singing amid the hot mugginess of the day. My parents are gone and the reunion won’t be in the same spot this year, one reason why a pewee song is so melancholy to me.
As with many bird species, the pewee’s numbers are declining. I’d like to think that long after I’m gone, the reassuring sound of a pewee in summer will still be heard by humans here in the Chicago region.
Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the baiduhai and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to [email protected].