OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER. 423 



charging this curious piece, I discovered that it was flintless ! We were 

 nearly a mile distant from Mr Perkins"' house, but as we were resolved 

 to have the bird, we proceeded to it with all dispatch, procured a gun, 

 and returning to the tree, found the Flycatcher, examined its flight and 

 manners for a while, and at length shot it. As the representative of a 

 species, I made a drawing of this individual, which you will find copied 

 in the plate indicated above. But now let us attend to Nuttall's ac- 

 count. 



" This undescribed species, which appertains to the group of Pewees, 

 was obtained in the woods of Sweet Auburn, in this vicinity, by Mr John 

 Bethune of Cambridge, on the 7th of June 1830. This and the second 

 specimen acquired soon afterwards, were females on the point of incuba- 

 tion. A third individual of the same sex was killed on the 21st of June 

 1831. They were aU of them fat, and had their stomach filled with torn 

 fragments of wild bees, wasps, and other similar insects. I have watched 

 the motions of two other living individuals, who appeared tyrannical and 

 quarrelsome, even with each other. The attack was always accompanied 

 with a whining querulous twitter. Their dispute was apparently, like 

 that of savages, about the rights of their respective hunting-grounds. 

 One of the birds, the female, whom I usually saw alone, was uncommonly 

 sedentary. The territory she seemed determined to claim was circum- 

 scribed by the tops of a cluster of Virginian junipers or red cedars, and 

 an adjoining elm and decayed cherry-tree. From this sovereign station, in 

 the solitude of a barren and sandy piece of forest, adjoining Sweet Auburn, 

 she kept a sharp look-out for passing insects, and pursued them with great 

 vigour and success as soon as they appeared, sometimes chasing them to 

 the ground, and generally resuming her perch with an additional mouth- 

 ful, which she swallowed at leisure. On ascending to her station, she oc- 

 casionally quivered her wings and tail, erected her blowzy cap, and kept 

 up a whisthng, oft-repeated, whining call, o^ pu, pu, then varied to pit, 

 pip, and pip, pit, also at times pip, pip, pu, pip, pip, pip, pu, pu, pip, or 

 ta, til, til, and sometimes til, til. This shrill, pensive, and quick whistle, 

 sometimes dropped almost to a whisper, or merely pU. The tone is, in fact, 

 much like that of the phU, phii, phu, of the Fish Hawk. The male, how- 

 ever, besides this note, at long intervals had a call of eh phebee, or JCphebea, 

 almost exactly in the tone of the circular tin whistle or bird call, being loud, 

 shrill, and guttural at the commencement. The nest of this pair 1 at 

 length discovered in the horizontal branch of a tall red cedar, forty or 



