I had a Say's Phoebe nesting under the back porch roof for about 11 years. It started when the swallow's nest she had taken over slid off the painted eave. Babies and the broken mud nest were all over the porch. I put the babies with some of the original nest in a cottage cheese container and nailed it up where the old nest had been. She had two sets of babies every year in that container.
She would return the same time in March, give or take a day, and perch on a nail under the eaves. There were many nails that for some reason someone had hammered nails half way along the eave. Phoebe only roosted on that one particular nail. Phoebes nail.
Say's Phoebes don't return as a flock, it was always her alone coming back to her little nail and sometimes there would still be snow on the ground. I'd enter on my calendar - 'Phoebe home'. I live up near the Canadian border and she may have flown a thousand miles or more to get home.
As the years went by she became tamer and would sometimes sit within a few feet of me. I'd always talk to her when she did. She grew to trust our dogs but scolded a new puppy we acquired. She never did trust cats.
Most evenings I would sit under the porch waiting for her to come in for the night or I'd check the nail before I went to bed. I had to see her safe and sound on her nail - or sitting on her eggs.
One summer's day I noticed all five of her latest fledglings sitting a fence and went to say hello. Her babies learned trust of us through their mother I guess and this time one even allowed me to run my finger down his breast, glaring at my finger as I did so. Phoebe herself landed next to them and it was then I noticed the state of her. She looked faded, thin - worn out. I realized she was now very old and was doing her best to take care of her last brood. She just sat there looking at me, as if she was tired out. There was always a male Phoebe around to help feed the babies but I don't know if it was the same one, he was very shy of us.
Not long after that, when her babies were catching insects on their own, Phoebe never came home. I later found her little body in the garden by the fence she liked to sit on.
One evening, many years after she died, I saw a Say's Phoebe roosting on her nail. Why the bird picked that nail I don't know, but it didn't happen again.