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Eastern Wood-Pewee | Contopus virens
Oostelijke bospiewie | Pibí Oriental
The Eastern Wood-Pewee is the small, olive-grey pewee of deciduous woodland east of the Great Plains. It is hardly separable in appearance from Western Wood-Pewee, but it whistles a clear, syllable-separated note that gave the whole group its name. It breeds from southern Canada to the Gulf Coast and winters in northwestern South America.
Voice
The song is a clear, slowly whistled pee-a-WEE: the first syllable sustained, the second short, the third drawn upward, followed by a pause and then a long, descending pee-ur. The two phrases alternate for minutes on end from the canopy. At dawn a third phrase is added, a rapid ah-di-dee. The tone is clear and broken into syllables, without the nasal overtone of the western bird. The call is a sharp chip.
Recording: Rory Nefdt — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Hart’s Brook Park and Preserve (near Hartsdale), Westchester County, New York, United States · xeno-canto
Identification
A medium-sized flycatcher with a peaked crown, upright posture, long wings whose tips reach well over the base of the tail, and a tail held still. The upperparts are olive-grey, throat and belly off-white, the sides of the breast dark, producing the pattern of an open waistcoat. Two off-white wingbars show clearly; there is no eye-ring. The lower mandible is orange-yellow at the base and dark towards the tip. It perches high and in the open and returns to the same branch after each sally.
Confusion species
Western Wood-Pewee cannot be separated on plumage; song is the only usable mark. The western bird gives one harsh, nasal, descending brzheeer with no clear whistled tone, where the eastern whistles pee-a-WEE and pee-ur in separated syllables. The two occur side by side only in a narrow band on the Great Plains, from southern Manitoba and the Dakotas to western Texas; leave silent birds there unnamed. Eastern Phoebe lacks clear wingbars and bobs its tail continually, which the pewee does not. Least Flycatcher is smaller, with a bold white eye-ring and a shorter wing projection; Acadian Flycatcher is greener, with a yellow eye-ring and an entirely pale lower mandible, and calls an explosive peet-sa.
Habitat
Deciduous and mixed woodland with an open understorey, from extensive forest to small woodlots, hedgerows, pine plantations, parks and wooded suburbs. What it needs above all is open space in the mid-storey to hunt from; a dense shrub layer makes a stand unsuitable. Woodland edges along streams and roads are used as well. In winter it uses forest edges and second growth in the Andean region of northwestern South America.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.
Range and movements
Breeds from southern Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec to the Maritimes, and south through the whole eastern United States to eastern Texas, the Gulf Coast and northern Florida; the western limit runs through the eastern Great Plains. It arrives late, from late April to early June, and leaves in August and September. Wintering is in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil and Bolivia; migration passes over Mexico, Central America and partly over the Caribbean. Migrants are numerous in Florida and in the Bahamas and Cuba.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Stand in open deciduous woodland in June and listen for the slow pee-a-WEE; the bird keeps singing through the hottest part of the day, when the wood is otherwise quiet. Then scan the mid-storey at eye level for an upright bird that keeps returning to the same branch. If in doubt with Eastern Phoebe, watch the tail — if it stays still, it is the pewee.
Conservation
The species falls in the Least Concern (LC) category of the Red List; Partners in Flight puts the breeding population at over ten million birds. North American breeding bird surveys nevertheless show a decline of roughly a third to a half since 1966. A much-studied explanation is browsing of the herb and shrub layer by overabundant white-tailed deer, which changes the structure of the forest floor and with it the supply of insects; forest loss on the wintering grounds and the decline of flying insects also play a part. Collisions with lit towers and buildings take birds during nocturnal migration.
Scientific name
Contopus virens | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Muscicapa virens; because it was later moved to another genus, author and year stand in parentheses. The genus Contopus was introduced in 1855 by Jean Cabanis, from Greek kontos 'short' and pous 'foot'. The species name virens is Latin for 'becoming green, green', after the olive plumage. The specimen described came from Carolina. Pewee, piewie and pibí all render the song of this species in words.