CRESTED FLYCATCHER 207 



farm-buildings, sitting often on the ridgepole, but it also 

 shows a marked fondness for the neighborhood of water. 



The name Phoebe suggests the song, phee'-wt or plied - 

 ivi-wi, hoarser than the pure whistle of the Chickadee, and 

 with much more snap than the drawling note of the Wood 

 Pewee. The Phcebe has also a chip, and about its nest a 

 curious chattering cry. It raises two broods in the northern 

 states, and the song is therefore heard well into July ; after 

 the moult in late summer the song is often heard again. In 

 early spring the Phcebe occasionally utters a flight-song, 

 beginning with whits and running into pjlioebes rapidly 

 repeated. 



The sideways sweep of the tail is a characteristic action 

 by which the bird may always be identified ; in the old birds 

 the absence of wing-bars also serves to distinguish it from the 

 Wood Pewee. Young birds have dull wing-bars, but they 

 cannot refrain long from making a suggestive movement 

 of the loose-hung tail. 



Crested Flycatcher. Myiarchus crinitus 



9.01 



Ad. — Head dark brown above; back olive-brown; tail in flight 

 nearly as reddish as a Brown Thrasher's ; wing-bars brownish- 

 white ; throat and breast ashy ; belly sulphur-yellow. 



Nest, in holes in trees. Eggs, white, with dark streaks. 



The Crested Flycatcher is a summer resident throughout 

 New York and New England, but is absent from the forest 

 region of northern New England and New York, except 

 along the great water-courses. It is much commoner in 

 Connecticut than in Massachusetts, where it is absent from 

 many localities. It arrives early in May, and remains till 

 September, but, like most of the flycatchers, is rather silent 

 in August. It frequents orchards and woodland, breeding in 

 holes in trees, generally using a piece of cast snake-skin in the 

 material of the nest. 



