For 50 years, hundreds of phoebe birds have called this South Side location home

The year that Ohio became a state, 1803, the first bird was banded in North America. The subject was an endearing little flycatcher known as the eastern phoebe. Pre-European settlement, phoebes sited their nests on rocky alcoves of cliffs, just inside caves, stone outcrops and occasionally in wooden debris.

After settlement, phoebes quickly took to suitable human structures. Now, most of their nests are on building ledges, shed rafters, under bridges and the like. Because of the flycatchers’ adaptability to the hand of man, many people live in close association with the birds.

Pioneer ornithologist John James Audubon was an early phoebe fan, and the bander of that phoebe 220 years ago. A phoebe pair returned to his Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, property each spring to nest. Audubon became curious as to whether the offspring also returned to his land and tied silver thread to the legs of the 1803 brood. Two of the nestlings returned the following year.

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Since then, nearly 80 million birds have been banded in North America, resulting in millions of recovered bands. Information generated by banding has produced scads of information regarding migration route and timing, site fidelity, longevity and much more.

An interesting local case of site fidelity and phoebes involves Green Lawn Cemetery on Columbus’ South Side. The sprawling 360-acre cemetery is Ohio’s second largest, and it contains great diversity of plant life. It has long been known as a birding hotspot.

For at least 50 years, phoebes have nested on the Howald mausoleum on the north side of the pond near the cemetery’s center. They always locate their nest on a ledge under the mausoleum’s portico. I visited back on May 14 and took the accompanying photo of an adult feeding the chicks. Both parents regularly attended to the nest.

The mausoleum is the final resting place of Ferdinand Howald and family members. Howald was born in Switzerland in 1856, and died on March 29, 1934 – about when phoebes return in spring. He was trained as an engineer and made his fortune in West Virginia coal mining. At age 58, Howald took up art collecting and in short order amassed a world-class collection. He donated 185 pieces to the Columbus Museum of Art, located just four miles from his mausoleum.

Given the artistic intricacies of a phoebe nest, which is an adobe cup shingled in moss and lined with grasses and hair, Howald would surely be pleased that the avian artisans took up residence on his Greek revival mausoleum.

The engineer/art connoisseur surely knew about Audubon’s artistic talents, although it’s less likely that he was aware that America’s greatest bird artist also banded the first phoebe in the New World. Audubon’s dramatic painting of a pair of Eastern Phoebes, depicted on cotton bolls in Louisiana, would have been at home in Howald’s collection.

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While no one has affixed silver threads or metal bands to any of the Howald phoebes insofar as I am aware, we can make some assumptions about their multi-decades of nestings. Audubon’s inaugural phoebe banding and subsequent work suggests great site fidelity to nest locations. It seems likely that many or perhaps all of the Howald birds are part of the same clan.

Phoebes have an average clutch of four-to-five eggs, and survivorship to adult (one year) is about 50%. Most years, eastern phoebes pull off two broods. So, in an average year, the Howald birds produce about (conservatively) four birds that make it to adulthood. So, over the course of five decades, that’s about 200 phoebes spawned from Howald’s mausoleum.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.