222 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



(1877) mentions "querulous exclamations {wheu, wheu, when) which 

 are more or less guttural and subdued." 



Dr. Winsor M. Tyler sends me the following notes on the voice 

 of the least flycatcher : "After listening to the chebec's song thousands 

 of times with the question of stress in mind, I can detect little dif- 

 ference in the accent of the two syllables. The song suggests to me 

 the words a ship, snapped out emphatically, enthusiastically, like a 

 mariner sighting a sail at sea. The bird sometimes varies its sing- 

 ing by running several songs into a quick series. At a distance 

 this form resembles the house sparrow's reiterated chillip. On June 

 13, 1915, I saw a least flycatcher fly across a field — a distance 

 of 75 yards — singing a jumble of notes in which his regular chebec 

 occurred frequently. He alighted high in an apple tree, presumably 

 for the night, for it was almost dark. 



"The bird is an incessant singer. I have heard it repeat its song 

 about once a second, with occasional pauses, for two hours or more. 

 My notes state : 'On June 18, 1912, the chebec woke at 3 : 18 a. m. 

 Once in the course of a minute he sang 60 times; during another 60 

 seconds, he sang 75 songs.' When out of doors in the night, long 

 before day, I have heard several times a sharp chebec suddenly crack 

 out of the darkness above my head." 



Field marks. — The least flycatcher looks much like a small, chunky 

 wood pewee, with a more prominent eye ring and with more exten- 

 sively white under parts. Compared with the other small flycatchers 

 of the Empidonax group, it is much whiter below, with hardly any 

 tinge of yellow, and the wing bars are much whiter ; furthermore, it 

 is the smallest of the genus within its summer range. Its common 

 note is the most distinctive of all, and its haunts and habits are quite 

 different from those of the others, always active, brave, and conspic- 

 uous. It could hardly be overlooked or mistaken. 



Enemies. — ^Like all other small birds this flycatcher is preyed upon 

 by many predatory birds and mammals. G. Bartlett Hendricks 

 (1933) tells of an attack on a least flycatcher and its young by two 

 gray squirrels. A gray squirrel was seen to run up a tree with the 

 adult in its mouth. It "halted half way up the tree and proceeded 

 to eat the bird. * * * in the meantime, another gray squirrel 

 was stalking the first bird," which was rescued. 



William Brewster (1906) writes: "The last nest that was built in 

 our garden (in 1895) was attacked by a large troop of English 

 Sparrows when it contained young about half grown. Although 

 both parents defended it with utmost spirit, the Sparrows succeeded 

 in tearing away part of the outer walls of the nest, and one of them, 

 standing on its rim, bent down and delivered several murderous but 

 fortunately ineffective pecks at the heads of the young. In the end 



