24 TYRANNID^E I FLYCATCHERS. 



used to be called : small olivaceous Flycatchers, without 

 very strong distinctive coloration, or any bright tints 

 whatever. The present, though the only one of its 

 genus in New England, and well marked in the char- 

 acters above given, requires careful discrimination, in the 

 hands of the novice, from any of the species of Contopus 

 or Empidonax. Closely related, however, as it is to 

 these in physical characters, it differs so much in habits, 

 in notes, in nesting, and almost every particular of its 

 life-history, as to make in our bird-life quite a figure 

 of its own. 



It is a summer visitor to New England, like all the 

 family ; but it comes earlier and lingers later than any 

 other, being found in seasons so unpropitious that one 

 wonders where it finds the necessary supply of insect 

 food ; and in fact at some seasons berries form a part of 

 its food. It is one of the very first birds to presage the 

 opening year, the very harbinger of spring. Before 

 that season is crowned, the bird is on the alert, and 

 its sharp, querulous "pewit pewit" seems to complain 

 impatiently of the tardy march of nature forth from 

 bondage into freedom. An occasional Phoebe-bird may 

 appear even in February ; some come by the middle of 

 March ; by the end of that month there are plenty, and 

 it is well through October before the loitering hosts have 

 disappeared. For the greater part of the year, therefore, 

 Pewits make their homes in New England; they are 

 common, in most places abundant, and not restricted by 

 latitude in their distribution ; and being also very famil- 

 iar birds, are among those best known to all classes. 



Civilization has effected in this case the same change 

 in the nest-building of a bird that has resulted in the 

 more conspicuous instance of the Swallows, by affording 



