EASTERN WOOD PEWEE 273 



small insects it must capture. These are so small that we do not 

 always catch sight of them in the air, but we may infer their number 

 from the bird's actions, by hearing the click of its bill as it snaps them 

 up, or attempts to do so, and sometimes by seeing more than one insect 

 in the bird's beak after it alights. Forbush (1907) noticed this habit 

 and remarks: "It usually perches on dead branches at some height 

 from the ground, and flies out to some distance, taking one or many 

 insects at each sally." 



Dickey in his manuscript states that "the birds flit out from wood- 

 land margins to feed in clearings and over corn, wheat and oat fields. 

 They are prone, too, to hover beside the webs of spiders and extract 

 flies that have been snared, and they make repeated trips out over 

 marsh -land and return to the woods, their beaks filled wdth appendages 

 of insects." 



That the food of the wood pewee is not restricted to small insects 

 is shown by A. Dawes DuBois (MS.), who reports that he saw a 

 parent bird come to a nest "with a good-sized butterfly, a red admiral, 

 wliich the young bird swallowed, wings and all." 



Bendire (1895) quotes George A. Seagle, superintendent of the 

 Wytheville (Va.) Fish Commission station, who stated: "This little 

 bird has frequently been seen to catch young trout from the ponds 

 soon after they had been transferred from the hatching house." 



Behavior. — The wood pewee is an obscurely marked, smallish fly- 

 catcher, only slightly larger than the little birds that make up the 

 genus Empid^ndx. Wilson (1831) says: "It loves to sit on the high 

 dead branches, amid the gloom of the woods." In such surroundings 

 it is not easily seen, for its plumage appears in the field as brownish 

 gray above and gi'ayish white below, colors that harmonize with the 

 filtered light of the forest. In fact, were it not for its voice, we 

 should rarely notice the bird even when it is darting about, high 

 overhead in its leafy retreat. It is a seclusive, apparently peace- 

 loving little bird, quiet, although very quick in its motions, and 

 seldom asserts itself, being wholly free from the aggressiveness that 

 marks the behavior of some of the larger flycatchers. We meet it 

 almost invariably alone, or in the company of its mate or its brood 

 of young. 



Here in eastern Massachusetts the wood pewee is not a common 

 bird; it has diminished in numbers noticeably during the past 20 

 years. Both Wilson and Aubudon speak of it as more common than 

 the phoebe. At the present time the reverse is true here, in the pro- 

 portion, it seems, of ten to one. 



Speaking of the wood pewee's relations with other species of birds, 

 A. Dawes DuBois (MS.) says: "The pewees would not tolerate red- 

 winged blackbirds or red-headed woodpeckers, although they were 



