184 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



guish between them. The greater then is the need for dwelling upon 

 characteristics of range, habitat, mode of nest building, and notes, 

 for in each of these virescdns is peculiar, and by one or another of 

 them, in the summer season at least, identification may be made sure. 



This is a bird of the Austral Zones; trailli and minimus are of 

 more northerly range ; and it is only northward of Mason and Dixon's 

 line that there is overlapping. Southward of that line virescens is 

 of the three the only breeding species. 



E. trailli is a bird of alder thickets, of willow-grown stream mar- 

 gins; minimus is found in orchards and in open, bush-grown places, 

 cultivated and waste ; but virescens is found in the forest : in cypress 

 swamps, in heavily wooded bottomlands, in the depths of wooded 

 ravines. 



Of its habitat in Florida, Williams (1928) quotes from Herbert L. 

 Stoddard this — "About four other pairs inhabit a half mile of this 

 strip of swamp and I find the bird a fairly common summer resi- 

 dent in similar situations along small water courses in northern Leon 

 County." Kopman (1915), writing of the bird in Louisiana, says 

 it is found "in swam.py woods of every character. It is evenly dis- 

 tributed throughout the wet wooded lands of the fertile alluvial 

 region, and occurs wherever there are river swamps and creek bot- 

 toms in other sections." In the Okefenokee Swamp, of Georgia, 

 say Wright and Harper (1913), the bird "finds a congenial haunt in 

 the gloom of the cypress 'bays,' where one often hears its note as he 

 paddles along the narrow runs. It also frequents the hammocks 

 and the cypress ponds." In the Great Dismal Swamp, of Virginia, 

 according to Daniel (1902), it is "not uncommon along the margins 

 of the inlets, notably where the foliage forms a canopy over the 

 water." In western North Carolina, wrote Brewster (1886), "every- 

 where below 3000 feet this Flycatcher is a very common species, in- 

 habiting all kinds of cover, but occurring most numerously in 

 rhododendron thickets bordering streams, where its abrupt, explosive 

 note of vncky-up could be heard at all times of the day." Schorger 

 (1927), writing of conditions in Wisconsin, says, "The essential 

 requirement of the Acadian Flycatcher appears to be a large tract of 

 undisturbed timber. The typical habitat is a deep, well-wooded ra- 

 vine having a rocky stream bed, which is usually dry. It may also 

 be looked for in the heavy timber of the river bottoms and in tama- 

 rack swamps in the southern portion of the state." W. E. Saunders 

 (1909), who discovered the bird in Ontario, wrote, "About fifty 

 miles southeast of Detroit and only a few miles from Lake Erie there 

 was formerly an immense black ash swamp, portions of which are 

 still in existence, and it was in these, where the mosquitoes were of 

 sufficient quantity to feed a large number of Flycatchers, that I 



