THE MUSEUM. 



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cotton and such other material as it 

 may be able to purloin from the near- 

 b}' (arm house. The outer nest is 

 made of coarse sticks, g^rasses, etc., 

 coarsely thrown together in a saucer- 

 shaped mass; on this the inner nest 

 is placed and the two can nearly al- 

 ways be easily separated. The eggs 

 are indistinguishable both in size and 

 markings from those of the eastern 

 Kingbird and the parent birds have 

 the same courage in defense of their 

 eggs or young that is attributed to 

 T. tyrannns. 



As is well known the food of this 

 bird is not "strictly vegetarian," but I 

 did not believe that they did so much 

 damage to bees as they are charged 

 with doing, until last June. At that 

 time my father had some hundred col- 

 onies of bees in a young eucalyptus 

 grove about one hundred yards from 

 any building. As soon as the young 

 birds were able to Hy they came from 

 every point of the compass to feed on 

 those bees. 



I shot thirteen of them one day and 

 in the stomach of eleven I found 

 stings. There were bees in the other 

 two birds but, inasmuch as I could 

 find no stings, they may have been 

 drones. But in the eleven only there 

 were stings enough to account for all 

 the way from fifty to an hundred 

 worker bees, and I have no reason to 

 doubt that bees constituted their main 

 food supply for some months, I think 

 that twenty or twenty-five Kingbirds 

 will easily devour two or three hun- 

 dred bees in a day. This is a low es- 

 timate, but keep it up for thirty days 

 and perhaps sixty, and enough bees are 

 lost to more than compensate for the 

 good done by the birds as insect des- 

 troyers. 



The birds are too well known to 

 require description at my hands, but 

 7". iirticalii seems to be slightly 

 smaller than the eastern bird espec- 

 ially in extent of wings, while the 

 white terminal band on the tail of T. 

 tyrannns is wanting or else very nar- 

 row in the Arkansas Flycatcher. 



Cassin's Kingbird may be readily 

 distinguished from the proceeding 

 species by its darker colors, smaller 

 sizes and the brown outer web of the 

 exterior tail feathers, which in the 

 case of 7". vcrticalis is white. My 

 earliest set of this species was taken 

 May 4, 189S from a large nest thirty 

 feet up in a "Blue Gum" tree, and 

 consisted of five slightly incubated 

 eggs. On the same day I took a set 

 of four eggs also slightly incubated 

 from a nest forty feet up in a willow. 

 This nest was much like that of /;. 

 traillii or some of the other smaller 

 Flycatchers built on a larger scale. I 

 also took, on the same day, a set of 

 three heavily incubated eggs from an- 

 other "blue gum." This was also a 

 a finely woven nest and in fact the 

 nests of this species are nearly always 

 better than those of the Arkansas 

 Kingbird. My latest date is June 1 1 

 when 1 took two sets of four eggs each 

 from nests placed 1 5 feet up in box 

 elder trees. The eggs are uniformly 

 smaller than those of either T. tyran- 

 nns or 7'. vcrticalis and on the whole 

 are more similar to those of Tyrannns 

 melancholicus conchii than to the eggs 

 of any other bird that I have seen. 

 Cassin's Flycatcher is a bird of 

 the foothills and higher mountains 

 rather than the valley and prefers the 

 wilderness and more rugged hills to 

 those occupied by man. The average 

 set of eggs is larger than that of T. 

 vcrticalis and the nest not usually so 

 inaccessible. I have often heard the 

 shrill "whistle" of this species uttered 

 from some dead stalk of the "wild 

 mustard" just before a storm, and 

 coming as it does when "all the air a 

 solemn stillness holds" it has a wierd 

 and uncanny effect upon the ear. 

 Harry H. Dunn, 

 Fullerton, Cal. 



Self-expatiated Birds. 



By James J. Carroll. 



For some time past, the writer has 

 been devoting some leisure moments 

 to the study of wandering American 



