m'call's and others' notes on the bird 477 



ing about the topmost branches in active pursuit of their insect 

 prey — light and graceful on the wing, though less swift and 

 decided in their motions than true Flycatchers, rising high in 

 the air, then gliding swiftly back to their perches, while the 

 bright white wing-spot gleamed in the sunshine in contrast 

 with the black body-color. On his closer approach, these slen- 

 der-bodied birds became alarmed, ceased their aerial evolutions, 

 and winged their way to the hillside, to resume their sport 

 among the scrawny bushes that struggled for foot-hold with 

 the deeply-rooted rocks. But he followed the wayward fugi- 

 tives, now thoroughly on the qui vive, and at length, after dis- 

 mounting and clambering over the rocks, secured his trophies. 



This was in 1852. The year previous, however, Dr. A. L. 

 Heermann * had secured both adult and young bird on the 

 Cosumnes River in California, and he subsequently found the 

 species again in the Colorado Desert, near the Little Lagoon, 

 where an individual " was perched on a Mesquite tree, jerking 

 its tail almost incessantly, as do various other species of Fly- 

 catchers, and dashing occasionally in irregular curves and 

 angles high into the air in pursuit of insects". On nearing the 

 Colorado River, the same gentleman saw gatherings of twenty 

 or thirty of these birds, many of which would be on the wing at 

 once, making a pretty spectacle. 



I derive these items, much abridged, from Mr. Cassin's beau- 

 tiful book, which made the bird well known to American orni- 

 thologists by the faithful colored portraits of both sexes it 

 contains, and these excellent fragments of biography. The 

 curious creature, for which we have no very apt English name, 

 is evidently a well-marked character, so similarly are different 

 observers impressed at first sight. See what a later writer, Mr. 

 Ridgway, says, and how he reproduces a picture that we now 

 recognize at a glance : — 



" On several occasions we heard, among the cedar and piiion 

 woods of the desert ranges in Western Nevada, a note so similar 

 to the prolonged, querulous, rattling call of Nuttall's Wood- 

 pecker {Picus nuttalli), that we entered the fact among our 

 notes as evidence of the occurrence of that species eastward of 

 the Sierra. We could never see the author of these notes, how- 

 ever, until, on the 27th of June, 1868, when exploring the Soda 

 Lakes of the Carson Desert, we heard near by, in a ravine of 



*The substance of Dr. Heermanu's account is inserted by Dr. Brewer in his 

 " History ", but wrongly accredited to Dr. T. C. Henry. 



