290 LAND-BIRDS. 



oscine (or unmusical) birds who possess this note. They have 

 also a whit, a single rather melancholy whistle, but seldom 

 heard, and various twitters, of which some are querulous and 

 others not unlike those of the King-bird. Besides these 

 sounds, of which the latter are heard chiefly in spring, they 

 utter quite constantly during the breeding-season, though 

 much less often in summer, and rarely in autumn, their famil- 

 iar and cheerful note, pee-wee, which is subject to more or less 

 modification. Occasionally, in April, a Pewee darts into the 

 air, and, hovering or fluttering in a circle, repeats this note 

 so rapidly and excitedly as to produce eccentric music, which 

 might almost without impropriety be called a song. There is, 

 I believe, nothing which I can say to endear these birds to 

 the naturalist, more than they are now endeared to all who 

 know them. 



IV. CONTOPUS. 



A. BOREALIS. Olive-sided Flycatcher. A rather rare 

 summer resident.* 



a. About 7J inches long. Tail, considerably forked; 

 crown-feathers, erectile and dark-centred. Above, of an inde- 

 scribable " dark olive brown " ; sides (almost meeting across 

 the breast), shaded streakily with the same. Under parts, 

 otherwise white or yellowish. Wings, with more or less ob- 

 scure white edging. Bill, black above only. 



b. The nest is much less finished and artistic than that of 

 the Wood Pewee, and is, moreover, nearly always placed in 

 an evergreen or orchard tree. It is frequently built in a pine, 

 from fifteen to even fifty feet above the ground, being placed 

 in the fork of a horizontal limb. One before me is shallow, 

 and is composed of twigs, fine strips of bark, stalks of field- 



* A more or less common summer miles of Boston to the north and west, 



resident of northern New England, es- but during the past ten or fifteen years 



pecially of the great coniferous forests it has nearly if not quite deserted this 



of northern Maine and New Hampshire, region. It still nests in considerable 



where it is very generally distributed, numbers on Cape Cod, and very spar- 



and in places numerous. It used to ingly in the more elevated parts of 



breed sparingly but regularly at a Worcester and Berkshire counties, 



dozen or more localities within twenty Massachusetts. W. B. 



