The Say's Phoebe that cohabits our 5 acres, and who, like us, favors the couple hundred square yards occupied by the house, is certainly one of our favorite cohabitants, if not the favorite (well, maybe after the Gray Fox). We have one every month of the year, though it

Say's Phoebes as painted by Audubon

makes itself scarce in December and January. It has fellow-creature company in Spring and Summer, but most of the time there's just one. How many "ones" there have been over the years, we cannot tell. Our current bird might be the one Cindy Kamler released here last Fall. Whatever the case, it is quite active now. In the morning it may be seen scanning for unwary insects from the perch I made for it on a deck corner; when it spies suitable prey, it swiftly darts forward with great confidence of success. We love its plaintive minor-keyed song, at once mournful and optimistic. Now is the time when those that migrate to warmer climes in winter (most Say's Phoebes, apparently) are turning up again in Eastern Sierra lowlands. This hardy bird is often found in the dryest and hottest of Eastern Sierra locales. We saw several - of course, only one at a time - a couple of weeks ago in arid Death Valley canyons.

Its scientific name is Sayornis saya, leaving little doubt that it was named for Thomas Say, the great early American entomologist. For a government-sponsored exploring trip to the Rocky Mountains in 1820, Say was pressed into service as zoologist, and he brought back more than one bird new to science. The Phoebe was first named and described for science by the European ornithologist Charles L. Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon). He dedicated the bird "to my friend, Thomas Say, a naturalist of whom America may justly be proud, and whose talents and knowledge are only equaled by his modesty."

Audubon painted the plate (for his great work on American Birds) containing Say's Phoebe from specimens collected by Thomas Nuttall and John Kirk Townsend, on their cross-country trek in 1834. Nuttall provided Audubon with perhaps the first written field account of the species:

"We first observed this bird in our route westward, about the 14th of June, within the first range of the Rocky Mountains called the Black Hills, and in the vicinity of that northern branch of the Platte known by the name of Laramie's Fork. At the time, we saw a pair perched as usual on masses of rocks, from which, like the Pewee, though occasionally alighted, they flew after passing insects, without uttering any note that we heard; and from their predilection, it is probable they inhabit among broken hills and barren rocks, where we have scarcely a doubt, from their behaviour, they had at this time a brood in a nest among these granite cliffs. They appeared very timorous on our approach, and seemed very limited in their range. Except among the Blue Mountains of the Columbia, we scarcely ever saw them again. Their manners appear to be very much like those of the Common Pewee; but they are much more silent and shy."

When he painted the plate Audubon had yet to see a live one in the field. But, in later years, his journals record field observations on several occasions.