‘THE HAMMOND FLYCATCHER. 
No. 150. 
HAMMOND’S FLYCATCHER. 
A. O. U. No. 468. Empidonax hammondi (Xantus). 
Synonym.—Dirty Litre FLYCATCHER. 
Description.—Adult: Above olive-gray inclining to ashy on foreparts,— 
color continued on sides, throat and breast well down, only slightly paler than back; 
remaining underparts yellowish in various degrees, or sometimes scarcely tinged 
with yellow?; pattern and color of wing much as in preceding species ; outermost 
rectrix edged with whitish on outer web; bill comparatively small and narrow, 
black above, dusky or blackish below. Young birds present a minimum of yellow 
below and their wing-markings are buffy instead of whitish. Length about 5.50 
(139.7) ; wing 2.80 (71) ; tail 2.29 (58) ; bill .41 (10.5) ; breadth of bill at nostril 
.I9 (4.83); tarsus .63 (16). Females average a little smaller. 
Recognition Marks.—Warbler size, the smallest of the four Washington 
Empidonaces, and possibly the most difficult (where all are vexing) ; olive-gray 
of plumage gives impression of blackish at distance; the most sordid below of the 
Protean quartette; nests high in coniferous trees; eggs wite. 
Nesting.—Nest: of fir-twigs, grasses and moss, lined with fine grasses, 
vegetable down and hair; placed on horizontal limb of fir tree at considerable 
heights. Eggs: 4, pale creamy white, unmarked. Av. size, .65 x .51 (16.5 x 12.7). 
Season: June; one brood. 
General Range.—Western North America north to southeastern Alaska, 
the valley of the Upper Yukon and Athabasca, breeding south, chiefly in the 
mountains, to Colorado and California; south in winter thru Mexico to the high- 
lands of Guatemala. 
Range in Washington.—Summer resident in coniferous timber on both 
sides of the Cascades, irregularly abundant and local in distribution. 
Authorities.—|‘*Hammond’s fly-catcher,’ Johnson, Rep. Goy. W. T. 1884 
(1885), 22.] Bendire, Life Hist. N. A. Birds, Vol. IT. 1895, p. 315ff. D*. Ra. 
D2 aE Ge) 
Specimens.—C. 
HAMMOND is the western analogue of minimus, the well-known Least 
Flycatcher of the East. It has not, however, attained any such distinctness in 
the public mind, nor is it likely to except in favored localities. These chosen 
stations are quite as likely to be in the city as elsewhere; but no sooner do we 
begin to arrive at conclusions as to its habits, notes, etc., than the bird forsakes 
the region and our work is all to do over again at some distant time. 
In the summer of 1895 I found Hammond Flycatchers fairly abundant 
on Capitol Hill (which was then in its pin-feather stage). Twenty or thirty 
might have been seen in the course of a morning’s walk in June. Everywhere 
a. Ridgway (B. of N. & M. Am.) recognizes two color phases of this bird, a white- and a yellow- 
bellied. In the latter the plumage of upperparts inclines more strongly to olivaceous. 
