Perhaps it's my imagination (and it often is) but there seems to be more Say's phoebes hanging around our Littleton farm this year. These large flycatchers usually hunt from a fencepost or from a dead snag and the latter fact may explain my observation.
Since we are letting the farm naturalize as much as possible, our calls to the tree service have diminished and we have plenty of dead wood in our larger trees. Combined with less attention to the pastures and "lawns," this may attract the phoebes by offering both more perch sites and more prey.
One would like to believe that naturalization does attract more species but there are always exceptions. An example this year is a dearth of collared doves which used to nest on the farm but have not been observed at all this year. Nature keeps us guessing.
