WOOD PEWEE. 287 



a tyrannical disposition, and I have observed one to chase 

 a harmless Sparrow to the ground for safety, who merely 

 by inadvertence happened to approach the station he had 

 temporarily chosen for collecting his insect game. 



The notes of peto-way peto-wdy pee-way are never ut- 

 tered by this species; but on the 12th ofFebuary, 1830, 

 in Alabama, I heard, at that season, a bird uttering 

 this note, and several times afterwards I saw a rather 

 large and dark Flycatcher in the Pine woods, to which 

 I attributed this call, and which must be a distinct spe- 

 cies, as its notes bear no resemblance to those of the 

 Wood Pewee, at this season, probably, in South America. 



The Pewee, I believe, raises here but a single brood, 

 which are not abroad before the middle of July. The 

 nest is extremely neat and curious, almost universally 

 saddled upon an old moss-grown and decayed limb in 

 an horizontal position, and is so remarkably shallow, and 

 incorporated upon the branch, as to be very easily over- 

 looked. The body of the fabric consists of wiry grass or 

 root fibres, often blended with small branching lichens, 

 held together with cob-webs, and caterpillar's silk, moist- 

 ened with saliva ; externally it is so coated over with blue- 

 ish crustaceous lichens as to be hardly discernible from 

 the moss upon the tree. It is lined with finer root fibres 

 or slender grass-stalks. Some nests are, however 

 scarcely lined at all, being so thin as readily to admit the 

 light through them, and are often very lousy with a spe- 

 cies of acarus, wiiich probably infests the old birds. The 

 eggs, 3 or 4, are of a yellow cream-color, spotted and 

 blotched, though not profusely, towards the great end with 

 two shades of lilac, and dark brown. 



The Wood Pewee is about 6 inches in length ; alar extent 10. 

 Above dusky olive. Head, as usual, partly crested, brownish black. 

 Below pale yellowish, inclining to white. Tail forked. The female 

 a little smaller. 



