A LABRADOR SPRING 



a kingbird we saw at Esquimaux Island. 

 Now the kingbird is a very familiar and com- 

 monplace bird in New England, but it rarely ex- 

 tends its range to these boreal regions if we 

 can judge by the fact that no one but Audubon 

 had recorded it for southern Labrador before. 

 But on the last day of this week, June loth, 

 a day when my thermometer recorded the 

 highest temperature at noon, 62 in the shade, 

 although it was but 44 in morning and 48 

 at night, a day when I found the first bake- 

 apple flower, the shechootai of the Indians, 

 a burst of summer appeared in the form of 

 delightful little flycatchers that at once took 

 possession of all the alder thickets. The 

 flycatcher family is a confusing one, and even 

 the great Audubon was not infallible in this 

 direction. For example, he says in his " Birds 

 of America " of the wood pewee : "I have seen 

 them in Labrador," and on June 22, 1833, at 

 American Harbour near Natashquan he says 

 in his journal : " I heard a wood pewee." Now 

 the wood pewee is more southern in its range, 

 and Audubon was ignorant of the existence 

 of the yellow-bellied flycatcher, which was 

 first named by Baird some ten years later, and 



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