41 8 FLYCATCHERS. 



instances I have known a pair, when the nest and eggs were 

 taken by some mischievous boys, commence a new nest in 

 the same place, and laying a smaller number of eggs, raised 

 a second brood. In one of those nests, under a bridge, the 

 insidious Cowbird had also dropped her parasitic egg. 



Towards the time of their departure for the South, which is 

 about the middle of October, they are silent, and previously 

 utter their notes more seldom, as if mourning the decay of 

 Nature, and anticipating the approaching famine which now 

 urges their migration. In the Middle States they raise two 

 broods in the season : but in Massachusetts the Pewit rarely 

 raises more than a single brood, unless, as in the instance re- 

 lated, they have had the misfortune to lose the first hatch. 

 The young, dispersed through the woods in small numbers, 

 may now and then be heard to the close of September exer- 

 cising their feeble voices in a guttural pMbe. But the old birds 

 are almost wholly silent, or but little heard, as they flit timidly 

 through the woods, when once released from the cares of rear- 

 ing their infant brood ; so that here the Phcebe's note is almost 

 a concomitant of spring and the mildest opening of summer, — 

 it is, indeed, much more vigorous in April and May than at 

 any succeeding period. 



The Phoebe is an uncommon bird in the Maritime Provinces, 

 but more common in the vicinity of Montreal and westward to 

 Western Ontario, and in all the Eastern States. It breeds from 

 Manitoba and Newfoundland to South Carolina, and winters in the 

 Gulf States as well as in Cuba and Mexico. 



Note. -— Mr. G. S. Miller, Jr., captured on Cape Cod, in Sep- 

 tember, 1889, an example of Say's Phcebe {Sayornis soya), the 

 first that has been taken to the eastward of the Great Plains. 



