Eastern Phoebe – Flycatching in Freezing Weather
On the edge of a rough, roadside slope covered in withered vines, weeds and small trees, three Eastern Phoebes appeared to be hunting, flying up from perches to catch an insect in the air. I watched them for several minutes and wondered what they could possibly be catching on such a chilly day. It was late in the afternoon, and the temperature might have been in the mid 30s at most, after a day mostly below freezing – but I guess it’s possible there might have been some insects in warm shafts of sunlight, and in this particular place, the Phoebes were hunting in a tangle of vegetation on a slope lit by the sun. In this part of the South, it doesn’t take much to bring out at least a few flying insects.
But there’s another possibility. Though the main food of Eastern Phoebes is flying insects, they also eat small fruits and seeds, especially in the winter when insects are hard to find. So I wonder if maybe they were eating some kind of berries or seeds, but instead of perching or walking along a branch to get them, like other kinds of small birds, maybe they hover or flit among the leaves to get seeds or berries or other fruits. I’ve often watched Phoebes hovering under the ledges of our roof, where they hunt for spiders or other bugs in spiders’ webs – so maybe they use the same kind of behavior when feeding on plant-food.
In a very brief search, I didn’t find any information specifically about this question, but the species account in Birds of North America Online notes that Eastern Phoebes very rarely walk or hop. They “rarely even move from limb to limb in vegetation or even pivot on a perch. Movement from one perch to another is accomplished via flight.”*
So I really don’t know if they were catching insects taking advantage of a warm shaft of sunlight – or making quick flights up to the vines and branches around them to pluck off berries or seeds.
* Harmon P. Weeks, Jr. 2011. Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.) Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology.