230 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



birds. For this reason it is seldom noticed save by those who look for it care- 

 fully and intelligently at the proper times and places. From 1869 to 1885, 

 when I was actively engaged in collecting about Cambridge, I used to note it 

 regularly, both during the spring migration in May and when the return flights 

 were passing southward in late August and early September. I was accus- 

 tomed to find it at a number of different localities in Arlington and Belmont, 

 but most frequently and numerously in the pitch pine and Virginia juniper woods 

 which formerly covered so much of the country immediately to the westward of 

 Mount Auburn and among dense thickets of deciduous shrubs in the Fresh Pond 

 Swamps. It was unusual to meet with more than one or two birds in a single 

 day, although I have seen as many as five or six in the course of as many con- 

 secutive hours. But few instances of the local occurrence of the Yellow-bellied 

 Flycatcher have been brought to my notice within recent years, but I have little 

 doubt that the species visits us quite as regularly and commonly now as it did in 

 earlier times. 



123. Empidonax traillii alnorum Brewst. 

 Alder Flycatcher. Traill's Flycatcher. 



Transient visitor, of irregular and usually rare occurrence in spring, very rare in autumn; 

 occasionally seen in summer, also. 



seasonal occurrence. 



May 23, i8gi, one male taken (Concord), W. Brewster. 



May 28 — June 6. (Summer.) 

 August 24, 1875, one 'ff- female * taken. Brickyard Swamp, W. Brewster. 



NESTING dates. 



June 15 — 25. 



On June 2, 1873, I killed an Alder Flycatcher in a thicket of barberry 

 bushes growing within a few yards of Mr. Charles Deane's house on Sparks 

 Street, Cambridge, and on May 31, 1875, I heard the characteristic call note of 

 another in some shrubbery just across this street from our garden and in front 

 of Mr. Israel M. Spelman's house. The next morning I found two birds among 

 low willows in the Brickyard Swamp, and a third in the Pine Swamp. They 

 were as noisy and apparently quite as much at home as if on their breeding 



'No. 45,173! collection of William Brewster, 



