ZOOLOGICAL, DEPARTMENT. 81 



Order PASSERES. Perching Birds. 



Birds with, weak feet, usually slight bills, mostly singers. 



Suborder CLAMATORES. Songless Perching Birds. 

 Family TYRANNID^:. Flycatchers. 

 Pre-eminent insect feeders; excellent friends. 



Genus TYRANNUS Cuv. 



Kingbird, reduced. 



189 4/1 4. (^68). Tyrannus tyrannus (Linn.). *Kingbikd; Bee Martin; Tyrant 

 Flycatcher. 



Common; throughout the state; May till Sept.; I have reports of this species from 

 Benzie County, Presque Isle, Thunder Bay and Escanaba; " Mackinac Island '' (S. E. 

 White); "common at Iron Mountain" (E.E.Brewster); "Keweenaw Point" (Knee- 

 land); breeds; nests in June in orchard trees, etc.; eggs three to five, cream colored, 

 irregularly spotted with brown; kills bees, both workers and drones; does more good 

 than harm as it kills myriads of noxious insects and usually few bees; Mr. L. W. Wat- 

 kins tells me that this bird breeds at Traverse City. Prof. S. A. Forbes found (report 

 of Mich. Hort. Soc, 1881, p. 204) that forty-two per cent of the food of several examined 

 consisted of insects. 

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