THE CANADA FLYCATCHER. 247 



* 



which it is suspended, with a lining of extremely fine and trans- 

 parent fibres. The greatest diameter does not exceed three and a 

 half inches, and the depth is not more than one and a half. The 

 eggs are four, dull-white, sprinkled with reddish and brown dots 

 towards the larger end, where the marks form a circle, leaving 

 the extremity plain. The parents show much uneasiness at the 

 appi-oach of any intruder, skipping about and around among the 

 twigs and in the air, snapping their bill, and uttering a plaintive 

 note. They raise only one brood in the season. The young 

 males show their black cap as soon as they are fully fledged, and 

 before their departure to the South." 



This bird, according to Audubon, is not very rare in 

 Maine, and it becomes more abundant the farther north we 

 proceed. He found it in Labrador and all the immediate 

 districts ; it reaching that country early in June, and re- 

 turning southward by the middle of August. 



MTIODIOCTES CANADENSIS. — ^i«Z«<6on. 



The Canada Flycatcher. 



Mnscicapa Canadensis, Linnaeus. S}-st. Nat., I. (1766) 327. \Til. Am. Om., 

 IIL (1811) 100. Aud. Orn. Biog., IL (1834) 17. 



Sylvia par dalina, Bonaparte. Nutt. Man., L (1832) 372. 



Description. 



Upper parts bluish-ash; a ring round the eye, with a line running to the nos- 

 trils, and the whole under part (except the tail coverts, which are white), bright- 

 yellow; centres of the feathers in the anterior half of the crown, the cheeks, con- 

 tinuous with a line on the side of the neck to the breast, and a series of spots across 

 the fore part of the breast, black ; tail feathers unspotted. Female similar, with the 

 black of the head and breast less distinct. In the young obsolete. 



Length, live and thirty-four one hundredths inches ; wing, two and sixty-seven 

 one-hundredths ; tail, two and fifty one-hundredths inches. 



This beautiful species is a rather common spring and 

 autumn visitor in all New England, and, in the northern 

 sections of these States, is an inhabitant through the whole 

 summer. It sometimes breeds in Massachusetts ; and I 

 have no doubt, that, in a few years, it will be found to 

 breed abundantly in this State, as it has increased in num- 



