SPECIES 10. MUSCICAPA CANTATRIX. 



WHITE-EYED FLYCATCHER. 



[Plate XVIII. Fig. 6.] 



Muscicapa noveboracensis, GMEL. Syst. i, p. 947. Hanging Fly- 

 catcher, LATH. Syn. Supp.p. 174. -Arct. ZooLp. 389, JVb. 274. 

 Muscicapa cantatrix, the little Domestic, Flycatcher, or Green 

 Wren, BARTRAM, p. 290. PE ALE'S Museum , JVo. 6778.* 



THIS is another of the Cow-bird's adopted nurses; a lively, 

 active, and sociable little bird, possessing a strong voice for its 

 size, and a great variety of notes; and singing with little inter- 

 mission, from its first arrival about the middle of April to a 

 little before its departure in September. On the twenty-seventh 

 of February I heard this bird in the southern parts of the state 

 of Georgia, in considerable numbers, singing with great vivacity . 

 They had only arrived a few days before. Its arrival in Penn- 

 sylvania, after an interval of seven weeks, is a proof that our 

 birds of passage, particularly the smaller species, do not migrate 

 at once from south to north; but progress daily, keeping compa- 

 ny, as it were, with the advances of spring. It has been observed 

 in the neighbourhood of Savannah, so late as the middle of No- 

 vember; and probably winters in Mexico, and the West Indies. 



This bird builds a very neat little nest, often in the figure of 

 an inverted cone; it is suspended by the upper edge of the two 

 sides, on the circular bend of a prickly vine, a species of Smilax 

 that generally grows in low thickets. Outwardly it is constructed 

 of various light materials, bits of rotten wood, fibres of dry 

 stalks, of weeds, pieces of paper, commonly newspapers, an 

 article almost always found about its nest, so that some of my 

 friends have given it the name of the Politician; all these sub- 



* Vino musicws, VrfrLioT, Ois. de VAm, Sept, pi. 52, 



