242 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



ing season to the Great Basin region of northeastern Colorado, 

 Nevada, northern Arizona, extreme eastern California, and eastern 

 Oregon. 



William Brewster (1889) based his name for the gray flycatcher on 

 a study of 65 specimens from Lower California and 13 from western 

 Mexico. He described it as "nearest E. ohscurus [= wrighti], but 

 larger and much grayer, the bill longer, the basal half of the lower 

 mandible flesh colored in strong contrast to the blackish terminal 

 half." And in his account he elaborates more fully on its resemblance 

 to wrighti and hammondi^ which has puzzled ornithologists ever 

 since. 



The normal breeding habitat of the gray flycatcher is now known 

 to be on the sagebrush plains, or semiarid flats overgrown with desert 

 underbrush or junipers. James B. Dixon tells me that he found it 

 breeding in Mono and Modoc Counties, Calif.; in both instances the 

 type of habitat was distinctive ; the birds were breeding on vast semi- 

 desert plains, where a heavy growth of winter-killed thornbrush was 

 the principal cover, with some sagebrush. "Out on these vast areas 

 of brush they seem to colonize, as we located over 16 nests in one area 

 of two square miles." 



Grinnell and Storer (1924) write: "The Gray Flycatcher, when 

 settled for the summer, is a bird of the arid Great Basin fauna. It 

 enters the Yosemite region in the environs of Mono Lake, where our 

 limited information suggests its restriction to the tracts of sagebrush 

 and Kunzia where these bushes reach largest size. In this sort of 

 'chaparral,' the Gray Flycatcher doubtless nests, as does its near 

 relative, the Wright, in the darker-hued, more typical chaparral of 

 the Sierras. It is interesting to note that the Wright Flycatcher, as 

 a breeding bird, was found to extend eastward down the slopes of 

 Leevining Peak nearly or quite to the edge of Mono Lake; it there 

 becomes a close neighbor of its very near relative, the Gray Fly- 

 catcher." 



Spring. — Harry S. Swarth (1904) writes: "I found this species 

 to be a common migrant in the Huachucas, more abundant than its 

 near relative wrighti^ and generally frequenting ground of a differ- 

 ent character. Some specimens were taken along the various washes, 

 but the region where they were most abundant was in the most bar- 

 ren of the foothill country; rough boulder strewn hills with but a 

 scattering growth of scrubby live oaks. In such places I found them 

 fairly abundant, that is I have seen as many as twelve or fifteen 

 in the course of a morning's collecting; but they never ventured 

 above the very entrance of the canyons, nor ascended the mountains 

 at all." 



Nesting. — Reliable information on the nesting of the gray flycatcher 

 is rather scanty, owing to a number of errors in identification. James 



