BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
21 
Plate V. 
TYKANNUS CAKOLINENSIS, Baird. 
Kingbird. 
The Kixgbied, or Bee Martin, has an extensive range, being fonnd 
during the summer throughout the continent of North America, from 
Texas and Florida in the south, as far as the 57th parallel of north lati- 
tude. Westward, north of the 44th parallel, it ranges from the Atlantic 
seaboard to Oregon and Washington on the shores of the Pacific. 
Its arrival in the United States from Mexico, Central and South 
America, and tropical Cuba, where it winters, generally occurs during the 
early part of April. Having taken the step, the birds are not long in 
spreading themselves over their immense breeding-grounds, which have 
been found to he eo-extensive with the whole territory over which they 
range. They reach the Middle Atlantic States from the 20th of April to 
the first of May; the New England, from the first to the 10th of the 
latter month, and their more northern habitats, not later than the 15th. 
Careful observations, carried through a series of years, have convinced 
us that the appearance of the males always antedates that of the females 
by a week or ten days. Their advent is unheralded by song, or noisy 
demonstration, and is as mysterious as their departure. Our knowledge of 
the fact is mainly furnished by the eye, and not by the ear, which is 
ordinarily the first organ that apjirises us thereof. 
Like most of its kin, the Kingbird is not gifted with a fine 
voice. "When it does essay a madrigal, its shrill, unmusical syllables are 
anything but pleasing and welcome to the cultivated ear. It may be 
otherwise with beings of its own special class. At all events, his song, if 
such it can be truly called, has the anticijiated effect — namely, that of 
