102 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the female alone incubated the eggs. Her sessions in the nest varied 

 from 5 to 32 minutes; the longest was during a heavy shower; but 

 during the following morning, which was fair, she sat once for 29 

 minutes continuously, and twice for 26 minutes. Her recesses ranged 

 from 1 to 21 minutes. The average of 15 sessions was 17 minutes; 

 of 15 recesses, 8.5 minutes. As others of the kind that I have 

 watched, she could be seen from the ground while she sat warming 

 her eggs; but probably because of the lowness of her nest, only 11 

 feet above the ground, she was shier than most and flew out if she 

 saw me still a long way off. The male sometimes came to stand 

 in the doorway of the cavity and look in at the eggs, but he never 

 sat on them. Indeed, although I have made careful studies of the 

 nest life of many kinds of American flycatchers, including the 

 related noble flycatcher, I have never seen the male incubate or brood. 



"The eggs hatched after 15 or 16 days of incubation. The newly 

 hatched nestlings bear a rather copious, long, dusky down. Their 

 bills are yellow inside and out. I have not been able to watch the 

 care and development of the young; but undoubtedly both parents 

 feed them." 



Henshaw (1875) introduced this flycatcher to our fauna by col- 

 lecting a pair of adults with their three young in the Chiricahua 

 Mountains of southern Arizona in 1874, of which he wrote : 



I obtained a pair of old birds, together with three young, August 24. These, 

 though indistinguishable in size and perfection of plumage from the adult 

 pair, were still the objects of their solicitous care, and were dependent on 

 them for food. Indeed, their presence might have remained unnoticed by me, 

 had I not been greeted, as I entered the mouth of one of the deep, narrow 

 canons intersecting the mountains in every direction, by the shrill notes and 

 angry cries of the old birds, who hovered in the air at a short distance, or 

 flew restlessly from tree to tree, endeavoring to distract my attention from 

 the young, till taking the alarm, they flew over into an adjoining ravine, 

 where soon after I found the whole family assembled, the old birds having 

 Immediately rejoined their charges. 



A somewhat different behavior of the young was noted by Mr. 

 Willard, who says in his notes that "on hearing certain notes from 

 the adults, the young 'freeze' and remain motionless as long as the 

 old birds keep up the noise." 



Plumages. — The "newly-hatched nestlings," referred to above by 

 Mr. Skutch (MS.), bore a "rather copious, long, dusky down." 

 Mr. Ridgway (1907) says that the young, in juvenal plumage, are 

 "similar to adults, but upper parts more strongly tinged or suf- 

 fused with brownish buffy, middle and greater wing-coverts and 

 distal secondaries edged or margined with cinnamon-buff, and yellow 

 crown-patch more restricted," 



