GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER. 177 



The places chosen by the Great Crested Flycatcher for its nest are so 

 peculiar, and the composition of its fabric is so very different from that 

 of all others of the genus with which I am acquainted, that perhaps no 

 one on seeing it for the first time, would imagine it to belong to a Fly- 

 catcher. There is nothing of the elegance of some, or of the curious tex- 

 ture of others, displayed in it. Unlike its kinsfolk, it is contented to seek 

 a retreat in the decayed part of a tree, of a fence-rail, or even of a pros- 

 trate log mouldering on the ground. I have found it placed in a short 

 stump at the bottom of a ravine, where the tracks of racoons were as close 

 together as those of a flock of sheep in a fold, and again in the lowest 

 fence-rail, where the black snake could have entered it, sucked the eggs 

 or swallowed the young with more ease than by ascending to some large 

 branches of a tree forty feet from the ground, where after all the reptile 

 not unfrequently searches for such dainties. In all those situations, our 

 bird seeks a place for its nest, which is composed of more or fewer mate- 

 rials, as the urgency may require, and I have observed that in the nests 

 nearest the ground, the greatest quantity of grass, fibrovis roots, feathers, 

 hair of different quadrupeds, and exuviae of snakes was accumulated. The 

 nest is at all times a loose mass under the above circumstances. Some- 

 times, when at a great height, very few materials are used, and in more 

 than one instance I found the eggs merely deposited on the decaying par- 

 ticles of the wood, at the bottom of a hole in a broken branch of a tree, 

 sometimes of one that had been worked out by the grey squirrel. The 

 eggs are from four to six, of a pale cream colour, thickly streaked with 

 deep purplish-brown of different tints, and, I believe, seldom more than 

 a single brood is raised in the season. 



The Great Crested Flycatcher arrives in Louisiana and the adjacent 

 country in March. Many remain there and breed, but the greater num- 

 ber advance towards the Middle States, and disperse among the lofty woods, 

 preferring at all times sequestered places. I have thought that they gave 

 a preference to the high lands, and yet I have often observed them in the 

 low sandy woods of New Jersey. Louisiana, and the countries along the 

 Mississippi, together with the State of Ohio, are the districts most visited 

 by this species in one direction, and in another the Atlantic States as far 

 as Massachusetts. In this last, however, it is very seldom met with un- 

 less in the vicinity of the mountains, where occasionally some are found 

 breeding. Farther eastward it is entirely unknown. 



Tyrannical perhaps in a degree surpassing the King Bird itself, it 



