382 LAND BIRDS 
or building a new one. The exterior of these nests is 
made of mud inixed with scraps of vegetable fibre and 
hair. Inside, it is lined with fine roots, strips of bark, 
hair, wool, and feathers. For some unexplained reason 
the nest of this species, like that of Say phoebe and the 
Eastern phoebe, is infested with innumerable insects, 
which frequently cause the death of the young. This. 
seems strange in the case of birds that splash in the water 
so much as do these. One of the first lessons taught 
the young is the delight of a bath in an irrigation ditch ; 
to this wholesome recreation they are initiated when 
about five weeks old. 
The food habits are those of all flycatchers, — a restless 
darting out into the air after a passing butterfly, or down 
for a grasshopper, and always back to the same perch. 
Nearly every insect with wings is seized by them with 
equal alacrity, and their capacity for eating is out of all 
proportion to their size. Especially is this true of the 
nestlings, to whom food is brought every two or three 
minutes and eagerly swallowed with no indications of 
surfeit. Possibly it is on account of this they develop 
so rapidly, for in fourteen days the weak naked babies 
become fully fledged Phcoebes, with a pretty call, not 
unlike that of their parents, but which, to imaginative 
ears, suggests “feed me, feed me!” And I may add 
that this is the interpretation put upon it by the father 
bird. At first the feeding is done by regurgitation, but 
when five days old the nestlings are fed on fresh insects. 
As soon as they are ready to fly the male takes entire 
care of them, leaving the patient mother to repair the 
