BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



231 



grounds, uttering their songs or calls almost incessantly. I shot two of them, 

 and I have a fourth Cambridge specimen which I killed on August 24, 1875, in 

 the Brickyard Swamp. The bird last mentioned furnishes the only instance 

 known to me of the occurrence of the species during its return migration. 



Mr. Walter Faxon heard an Alder Flycatcher in the Beaver Brook Reser- 

 vation, Waverley, on May 30, 1890, and another in Arlington on May 31, 1891, 

 while a third, which he found at Great Meadow, on June 3, 1894, remained in 

 the same place for a little more than a week, being last seen on June 1 1. 



Mr. J. A. Farley, who has repeatedly taken the nest and eggs of this Fly- 

 catcher at Lynnfickl, Massachusetts, reports^ that he has "noted it in the breed- 

 ing season .... so near Boston as Fresh Pond, Cambridge," where, as he informs 

 me by letter, he met with a bird on June 9, 1900, in a bushy tract somewhere 

 to the northward of the Glacialis. This individual, as well as the one seen by 

 Mr. Faxon at Great Meadow, may have been settled for the season and pre- 

 paring to breed, although in neither instance was the date of observation suffi- 

 ciently late to make this certain. In 1901, however, a male remained in Wav- 

 erley nearly if not quite through June, frequenting a meadow traversed by a 

 brook the banks of which, as well as those of some connecting ditches, were 

 fringed with panicled cornel, alder, raspberry and blackberry bushes, and a va- 

 riety of other low-growing native shrubs. It would be difficult to imagine a more 

 typical breeding ground of the Alder Flycatcher than that afforded by these 

 thickets ; but, although they were repeatedly and most thoroughly searched, the 

 nest, if really concealed there, escaped observation. Mr. Walter Deane and I 

 looked for it long and carefully on the morning of June 25, when the Flycatcher 

 was singing or calling almost incessantly among some elms on the borders of 

 the meadow. I cannot learn that the bird was noted after this date, or that it 

 was ever seen in company with a mate. 



The Alder Flycatcher has been so long and familiarly known as Traill's 

 Flycatcher that there are very many of us who, through mere force of habit, 

 continue to call it by that name. It has been recently ascertained,^ however, 

 that the true Traill's Flycatcher of Audubon does not occur in New England, 

 where it is replaced by the closely allied form alnorum. The latter breeds 

 rather commonly in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and in the adjoining ele- 

 vated portions of northwestern Connecticut, but only locally and very sparingly 

 in eastern Massachusetts. It is found abundantly in summer in many parts of 

 Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, where it frequents thickets and second- 

 growth woods on the borders of clearings and along the banks of streams. 



'J. A. Farley, Auk, XVIII, 1901, 347. 

 2W. Brewster, Auk, XII, 1S95, 159-163. 



