Phoebe singing, fi-bee

Phoebe is my constant strolling companion, a bird who joins me on every walk. She drops in with a startling little high pitched whistle which sounds like an air kiss. She shows a simple white under her belly and charcoal black feathers worn like a "hoodie" atop crown, upper breast and over her back and tail. Her keen little dark eye shines out handsomely, and, it seems to me, curiously, from her (or his) khol-tinted face. Phoebes are uniform-looking ;one resembles the next nearly exactly in plumage, but each is also beautiful and somehow unique in the moment. Their uniqueness could be in their bold presence and precision as bug catchers that hunt on the wing. It could also be their penchant for choosing open and prominent perches on which to alight. They favor trail posts, benches, metal signs, drinking fountains and lower outer tree branches--also stream boulders or upjutting logs and vegetation which overhangs water. They are fine little potters fashioning their nests from creek mud and grasses, stucco architecture of the birdworld.