LEAST FLYCATCHER, 421 
blance to those of the Wood Pewee, — at this season probably 
in South America. 
The Pewee, I believe, raises here but a single brood, which 
are not abroad before the middle of July. The nest is ex- 
tremely neat and curious, almost universally saddled upon an 
old moss-grown and decayed limb in an horizontal position, 
and is so remarkably shallow, and incorporated upon the 
branch, as to be very easily overlooked. The body of the 
fabric consists of wiry grass or root-fibres, often blended with 
small branching lichens, held together with cobwebs and cat- 
erpillar’s silk, moistened with saliva; externally it is so coated 
over with bluish crustaceous lichens as to be hardly discernible 
from the moss upon the tree. It is lined with finer root-fibres 
or slender grass stalks. Some nests are, however, scarcely 
lined at all, being so thin as readily to admit the light through 
them, and are often very lousy, with a species of acarus which 
probably infests the old birds. 
The plaintive and almost pathetic note of the Wood Pewee is a 
familiar sound amid the orchards of New Brunswick, and the bird 
is of common occurrence through Quebec and Ontario. It winters 
southward to Mexico and Guatemala. 
LEAST FLYCATCHER. 
CHEBEC. 
EMPIDONAX MINIMUS. 
Cuar. Upper parts olive; lower parts white, tinged with yellow; 
wings with two bars of grayish white. Length 5 to 5% inches. 
West. On fork of a tree; of twigs and grass, lined with grass or 
feathers. 
£ggs. 3-5; creamy white, usually unspotted ; 0.65 X 0.50. 
This is one of our most common summer birds in this part 
of New England, arriving from the South about the last week 
in April, and leaving us to retire probably to tropical America 
‘about the beginning of September or sometimes a little later. 
It also extends its migrations to Labrador and the Oregon 
