Eastern Wood-Pewee

Contopus virens · Flycatchers

Eastern Wood-Pewee

Prospect Park, 30 May 2026

An Eastern Wood-Pewee at the very top of a snag in Prospect Park at the end of May, which is where a pewee sits: an exposed perch over an opening in the wood, sallying out for flying insects and returning to almost the same twig. Pewees return to the park later than most spring migrants, typically not until mid-to-late May, from wintering grounds in the Andes.

That habit is as much the identifying feature as the plumage, grey-olive above, whitish below, no strong eye-ring. Pewees and the various Empidonax flycatchers look nearly identical in a photograph and are properly told apart by voice. Without having heard this one call, the genus is solid but the species is a reasonable inference from timing and posture rather than a certainty.

Eastern Wood-Pewee

Central Park, 21 September 2025

An Eastern Wood-Pewee sitting upright and still on an exposed perch in Central Park in September, between short sallies after flying insects. It is a flycatcher of the eastern deciduous woods, and in September it is on its way from the New York forests to the Andes.

Plain grey-olive above and off-white below, with none of the strong markings that make most flycatchers easy to call. This one is really identified by voice and habit as much as plumage. The song is the name: a slow, plaintive "pee-a-wee" that carries through a summer wood long after most birds have stopped singing for the day.