Days Like This

Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches

     This is a black and white (sort of) oil painting of an Eastern Phoebe. A trip to William O’Brien State Park last September brought windy and hot conditions for a six-mile birding walk. I spotted this bird along the Wedge Hill Savanna Trail perched on a branch over water, sallying for bugs. 

     I remember that day well. It was too windy for decent birding, and the temperatures were between 76-80˚ F. For me, that’s hot; and without the wind, I wouldn’t have walked as far as I had. Oftentimes, when I see a bird by itself, especially during migration, I often wonder about its circumstances. Eastern Phoebes leave Minnesota for warmer climes in the fall. How far would this one travel? Why was it alone? Was it a male or female? Was it cursing the wind like I was? Perhaps bugs were easier to catch on windy days. Maybe they have less control in the wind, making them easier prey. Or maybe they’re harder to find, hunkered down on leaves and twigs. After I took some photographs, I was thankful to have observed the phoebe for a while, for I knew my chances of seeing a lot of birds that day wasn’t good. As it turns out, I only recorded eleven species. Birding can be like that sometimes. 

     Above, I mentioned that this painting is black and white - sort of. When I started this painting, my goal was to leave out the bird’s pale yellow and brown feathers, and depict it as a black-and-white painting. Why? I’m not exactly sure. I guess I was in a black-and-white sort of mood and wanted to do something different. But I’ve been painting long enough to know that adding other colors to black and white adds depth. So besides ivory black and opaque white, this painting contains burnt sienna, raw sienna, and yellow ochre light. 

     Most bird lovers are familiar with Eastern Phoebes, at least in the eastern half of the United States. They are a common bird with light yellow feathers, a color that is just about as obscure as the red belly on a red-bellied woodpecker. Oh, those hues can be impossible to see! Whether black and white, black-ish, white-ish, yellow-ish, or brown-ish, they’re all understandable descriptions of an Eastern Phoebe to me. But what if you saw a reddish Eastern Phoebe? That’s right. Reddish. Say what? 

     On June 19, 2023, Robert (Bob) Bell photographed a reddish Eastern Phoebe in northern Ontario. No doubt it was clearly reddish. Or pink-ish. The color of a salmon filet. Weird! Now I’ve gotten some pretty crazy color casts from my black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia, Goldsturm) while photographing birds, turning their white bellies orange, but there wasn’t a bed of red roses to blame for the reddish feathers on Bob’s Eastern Phoebe. 

     So, what in the world was Bob seeing? It turns out that some birds can have different colored feathers based on what they eat. It’s called diet-induced erythrism. The reddish Eastern Phoebe that Bob photographed had probably eaten honeysuckle berries, either Morrow’s or Tatarian. It’s the first known case of erythrism in an Eastern Phoebe, in this instance from the carotenoid rhodoxanthin. There are many birds that exhibit erythrism, so keep your eyes open and your camera ready. If you see something strange, start documenting! 

     Both Morrow’s and Tatarian honeysuckle plants, originally from Asia, are prohibited from propagation or sale in Minnesota because they are considered invasive.

Eastern Phoebe at William O'Brien State Park, Sept. 3, 2024.
Note the pale yellow and brown feathers.

References

Bell, R. (2024, Jan.) A red Eastern Phoebe! The first record of diet-induced erythrism in Sayornis phoebe. Birding, 55(8), 68-70.