THE WESTERN FLYCATCHER. 387 
after an hour’s discriminating study, I shot from practically the same stand, 
three birds which said swit, piswit, and pisoo respectively, and picked up a 
Wright’s Flycatcher (E. wrightii), a Western Flycatcher (E. difficilis) and a 
Trail Flycatcher (£. traillii), The same woods contained Hammond's Flycatcher 
(E. hammondi), while the Western Wood Pewee (Mvyiochanes richardsonii), 
which has the same general economy, was abundant also. Difficilis? Etiam! 
The Western Flycatcher inhabits the deepest woods and occurs thruout 
the State wherever sufficient shade is offered. It is rather partial to well- 
watered valleys, and will follow these well up into the mountains, but does not 
occur on the mountain-sides proper at any consid- 
erable altitude. Nor does it appear to visit, save 
during migrations, those green oases in the dry 
country which are the delight of &Z. traillii. It 
mingles with trai/lii in summer along the banks 
of streams and at the edges of swamps; with 
hammondi in the more open woods and along the 
lower hillsides; with wrightii along the margin 
of mountain lakes and streams; but in the forests 
proper it is easily dominant. 
The Western Flycatcher is a catholic nester. 
It builds almost always a substantial cup of 
twigs, grasses, and hemp, lined with grass, hair 
or feathers. The outside is usually plentifully 
bedecked with moss, or else the whole structure 
is chiefly composed of this substance—not, how- 
ever, unless the color-tone of the immediate 
surroundings will permit of it. In position it 
varies without limit. We find nests sunk like 
a Solitaire’s in a mossy bank, or set in a 
niche of a rocky cliff, on logs, stumps, or 
beams, in a clump of ferns, or securely lodged 
iia fir tree at a height of forty feet. One I 
found in a swamp was saddled on the stem 
of a slanting vine maple without a vestige of 
cover other than that afforded by the general 
Taken near Tacoma. 
loom. Photo by J. H. Bowles 
§ 
Eggs to the number of three or four, NEST OF WESTERN 
. ° FLYCATCHER. 
rarely five, are deposited late in May or early 
rs are of a dull 
in June, and only one brood is raised in a season. The egg 
creamy white color, spotted and blotched rather lightly with cinnamon brown 
and pinkish buff, easily distinguishable from all others save those of the 
Traill Flycatcher. 
