KINGBIRD. 



405 



This well-knowTi, remarkable, and pugnacious bird takes up 

 his summer residence in all the intermediate region from the 

 temperate parts of Mexico to the uninhabited and remote inte- 

 rior of Canada. In all this vast geographical range the King- 

 bird seeks his food and rears his young. According to Audu- 

 bon they appear in Louisiana by the middle of March ; and 

 about the 20th of April Wilson remarked their arrival in 

 Pennsylvania in small parties of five or six ; but they are seldom 

 seen in this part of New England before the middle of May. 

 They are now silent and peaceable, until they begin to pair, 

 and form their nests, which takes place from the first to the 

 last week in May or early in June, according to the advance- 

 ment of the season in the latitudes of 40 and 43 degrees. 

 The nest is usually built in the orchard, on the horizontal 

 branch of an apple or pear tree, sometimes in an oak, in the 

 adjoining forest, at various heights from the ground, seldom 

 carefully concealed, and firmly fixed at the bottom to the sup- 

 porting twigs of the branch. The outside consists of coarse 

 stalks of dead grass and wiry weeds, the whole well connected 

 and bedded with cut-weed down, tow, or an occasional rope- 

 yarn and wool ; it is then lined with dry, slender grass, root 

 fibres, and horse-hair. The eggs are generally 3 to 5, yel- 

 lowish white, and marked with a few large, well-defined spots 

 of deep and bright brown. They often build and hatch twice 

 in the season. 



The Kingbird has no song, only a shrill, guttural tvvitter, 

 somewhat like that of the Martin, but no way musical. At 

 times, as he sits watching his prey, he calls to his mate with a 

 harsh tsheup, rather quickly pronounced, and attended with 

 some action. As insects approach him, or as he darts after 

 them, the snapping of his bill is heard like the shutting of a 

 watch-case, and is the certain grave of his prey. Beetles, 

 grasshoppers, crickets, and winged insects of all descriptions 

 form his principal summer food. I have also seen him col- 

 lecting the canker-worms from the Elm. Towards autumn, as 

 various kinds of berries ripen, they constitute a very consider- 

 able and favorite part of his subsistence ; but with the excep- 



