EASTERN KINGBIRD 25 



misty summer afternoons — gi"<iy, almost colorless days — and once, 

 August 12, 1909, at noon, under a blue sky. 



Dr. Leon Augustus Hausman (1925) has made a careful study of 

 "The Utterances of the Kingbird" to which readers are referred. 

 To quote from his summary : "The various cries and calls of the King- 

 bird, as well as the flight song, are all built up from the simple call 

 notes, which are best represented by the syllables kitter and klt^ and 

 differ from one another in grouping, length and intensity. The flight 

 song may be regarded as a true song, and is given only during the 

 mating season. The mating song is seldom heard; is more musical 

 in character than the flight song; possesses a definite song-rhythm 

 and two new, true song-notes." 



Albert R. Brand (1938), who has recorded on film the songs and 

 calls of almost 100 species of birds, summarizes the results of his in- 

 vestigation thus : "I believe that these studies are sufficiently compre- 

 hensive to warrant the conclusion that passerine song averages above 

 4,000 vibrations per second or around the highest note of the piano 

 keyboard." He records the kingbird's voice as 6,225 vibrations per 

 second (approximate mean), very close in pitch to the song of the 

 redstart (6,200). 



Field marks. — The eastern kingbird is a large flycatcher with a 

 broad white line across the tip of its black tail, two very inconspicuous 

 wing bars, and no yellow in its plumage. Of the two flycatchers 

 that resemble the eastern kingbird in general appearance, the gray 

 kingbird and the Arkansas kingbird, the former has no white in its 

 gray tail, and the latter has the tail margined with white and has a 

 yellowish breast. Ralph Hoffmann (1904) says: "The 'black tail, 

 broadly tipped with white., and the lohite under parts make the King- 

 bird an easy bird to identify, even from a car window." 



Enenues. — ^The kingbird has few enemies. A hawk may occasion- 

 ally catch him off guard, and once in a while a misguided apiarist or 

 proprietor of a cranberr}^ bog may turn against him. 



Formerly man was the bird's deadly enemy. Both Wilson and 

 Audubon deplored the wholesale slaughter of kingbirds in their day 

 by farmers for fancied depredations on their bees. Nowadays, how- 

 ever, the kingbird is protected as a song bird. 



Dr. Herbert Friedmann (1929) says that "the Kingbird is a very 

 uncoimnon victim of the Cowbird, there being only a very few actual 

 cases on record, although several writers have listed it, probably all 

 based on the same published instances." 



Fall. — Kingbirds keep mostly in family units until well into 

 August; when migration time is near, these small groups coalesce 

 and form flocks of a dozen birds or more. Now, nearly silent, they 

 sit about on wires, fences, and trees, or in open country on the 



