Phoebe and Young Master Audubon

(Script by Francie Von Mertens)

John James Audubon's birthday is coming up – a good excuse to tell one small story from a life filled with many. Audubon was a young Frenchman likely to be drafted into Napoleon's army when – to avoid that fate – his father sent him to Pennsylvania to manage a farm he owned. John James discovered a small cave on the property that offered him privacy and a place to study and draw. It also offered him a family of eastern phoebes to observe when a pair nested on a ledge over the cave entrance. They became very accustomed to one another.

That's the way it is with phoebes, one of the few bird species that move right in next to humans. If you have birds nesting under the eaves where you live, they’re probably phoebes.

Audubon tied silver threads to the six young phoebes before they fledged from their cave nest. He suspected they would return to the area the following year. Sure enough, that next spring, two phoebes showed up, their tiny silver bracelets still attached.

Audubon was an inquisitive 18-year-old when he conducted this country's very first bird banding experiment some 200 years ago. His results, indicating a bird's loyalty to nesting site, have been duplicated by bird banders many times since then. As artist and naturalist without equal, Audubon would go on to document the birds and mammals of his adopted homeland through his art.

By April 26, his birthday, phoebes will have returned to many backyards in New Hampshire. I suspect a pair also will have returned to that small cave in Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, to nest on a ledge over the cave entrance.