150 CANADA FLYCATCHER. 



it is full of spirit, and exceedingly active. It builds a very neat and 

 compact nest, generally in the fork of a small bush, forms it outwardly 

 of moss and flax, or broken hemp, and lines it with hair, and sometimes 

 feathers ; the eggs are five, of a grayish Avhite, with red spots towards 

 the great end. In all parts of the United States, where it inhabits, it 

 is a bird of passage. At Savannah I met with it about the twentieth 

 of March ; so that it probably retires to the West India islands, and 

 perhaps Mexico, during winter. I also heard this bird among the rank 

 reeds and rushes within a few miles of the mouth of the Mississippi. It 

 has been sometimes seen in the neighborhood of Philadelphia ; but 

 rarely ; and on such occasions has all the mute timidity of a sti'anger, 

 at a distance from home. 



This species is five inches and a half long, and eight in extent ; fore- 

 head, cheeks and chin yellow, surrounded with a hood of black that 

 covers the crown, hind head, and part of the neck, and descends, round- 

 ing, over the breast ; all the rest of the lower parts are rich yellow ; 

 upper parts of the wings, the tail and back, yellow olive ; interior vanes 

 and tips of the wing and tail dusky ; bill black ; legs flesh colored ; 

 inner webs of the three exterior tail feathers white for half their length 

 from the tips ; the next slightly touched with white ; the tail slightly 

 forked, and exteriorly edged with rich yellow olive. 



The female has the throat and breast yellow, slightly tinged with 

 blackish ; the black does not reach so far down the upper part of the 

 neck, and is not of so deep a tint. In the other parts of her plumage 

 she exactly resembles the male. I have found some females that had 

 little or no black on the head or neck above ; but these I took to be 

 young birds, not yet arrived at their full tints. 



Species XIV. MUSCICAPA CANADENSIS* 



CANADA FLYCATCHER. 



[Plate XXVI. Fig. 2, Male.] 

 Linn. Syst. d24.—Arct. Zool. p. 338, No. 273.— Latham, ii., 354. 



This is a solitary, and in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, rather a 

 rare species; being more numerous in the interior, particularly near the 

 mountains, where the only two I ever met with were shot. They are 

 silent birds, as far as I could observe ; and were busily darting among 



* Sylvia pardalina, Bonaparte Obs. No. 126. — Ibid. Synop. No. 108. 



