Plate XIX. 



Fig. 7. EMPIDONM AGADIGUS-Acadian Flycatcher, 



The Acadian Flycatcher arrives from the south the h\st of April, and remains about five months. 

 The first nest is built, and the full complement of eggs is deposited, before the beginning of June. 

 Early in July a second nest is usually constructed, and I am inclined to believe that a third brood is 

 sometimes hatched the latter part of August, for at this season I have found several nests containing 

 either partly incubated eggs or very young birds. 



LOCALITY: 



Land timbered with large trees, and overgrown Avith bushes, low trees, vines, and weeds, is the 

 natural home of the Acadian Flycatcher. They love to penetrate the depth of the forest, and delight to 

 rear their young in the most quiet and gloomy spots. They rarely, if ever, build in isolated trees, 

 though they often resort to the border of woods and the scrubby trees among taller timber along little- 

 used wagon-roads. In upland woods throughout the state they build more or less commonly, and even 

 in the dry hill-country in the southern counties, the melodious call-note is by no means an unusual 

 sound. Throughout the entire course of the Scioto river, which, rising in Hardin county, flows south to 

 the Ohio at Portsmouth, I am informed the Acadian Flycatcher is abundant in the summer. I have 

 found their nests plenty in the thick, rank vegetation along the river's banks from Columbus to near its 

 mouth. In June, 1880, I saw numbers of nests on low trees, among horse-weeds and nettles, where the 

 ground, protected from the sun by the interlacing arms of giant sycamores and elms, is always soft and 

 damp. And even upon islands, so low that a rise in the river of two or three feet overflows them, 

 I have noticed nests in July, when hunting Woodcock. On account of the various localities inhabited 

 one tree is almost likely to afPord a nesting-site as another, the only desideriitum seems to be a suitably 

 situated branch. I have taken nests from the maple, dogwood, oak, hickory, black-haw, thorn, indian- 

 arrow, beech, elm, papaw, willow, buckeye, hazel, and wild-grapevine. 



POSITION : 



The nest is usually suspended in a horizontal fork formed by small twigs near the extremity of a 



low, horizontal limb. Sometimes it is built at the bifurcation of a limb of an inch or two in diameter. 



Sometimes, as when in a vine or small bush, it is suspended between two parallel stems. And again, it 



is sometimes built among a number of irregular and twisted twigs. The rim of the nest may be in the 



same horizontal plane as the branches which support it, but commonly the supports touch the nest iibout 



halfway down the sides, the rim being half an inch or more above them. The bottom of the structure 



is generally free, but occasionally it rests upon a small branch. Ordinarily a canoj^y of leaves hangs 



immediately above the site, and protects the home and its contents from rain. A nest observed recently 



had three large oak leaves lying like shingles over it, and so close to the rim that they must have 



touched the bii-d's head while sitting. The distance of the nest from the ground varies from three to 



twenty feet; the usual distance is about six feet. 



83 



