Pee Wee (female)

Description:

This is a female. She is black and white with black legs. She has a white face and throat with a black stripe running from the crown, over the eye to where the black starts under a white throat. She also has a thin white bill.

Habitat:

In the back yard at the drain.

Notes:

I was indoors and noticed a Pee Wee flying down to where the drain is. I was washing and decided they must be drinking water. I went out to fill up the birdbaths and noticed they were actually collecting materials then flying away (check out the video to see them collecting stuff: https://youtu.be/ThduL6_mZv4 ). That meant they were in the process of building a nest!...which will be bowl shaped mud bound with hair, grass. I watched where they flew and unfortunately (for me) the nest is in the neighbour's yard, on the other side of a palm tree so I cannot actually see it. So while all material I have read always mentions that the female and male both incubate the eggs...they also build the nest together :) Gathering material on this side of the fence to build a nest on the other side of the fence. I just think these are one of the most beautiful birds. They are so pretty. These birds were common where I grew up and also a common sight here as well. I grew up calling these birds Pee Wees and although this bird is called a Magpie Lark, it is neither a Magpie or a Lark. It is in fact a member of the Monarch Flycatcher family. I found this little gem about pairs singing together: "Magpie-larks are one of the 200-odd species of bird around the world that are known to sing in duet; each partner producing about one note a second, but a half-second apart, so that humans find it difficult to tell that there are actually two birds singing, not one.....In the case of the magpie-lark, the duet singing is now known to be cooperative: pairs sing together to defend their territory." (Wiki)