BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



227 



which I quickly discovered perched in the blasted top of a tall oak near 

 the stone tower and at once recognized. Returning a few days later (on June 

 18), I searched the whole neighborhood and its surroundings, finding three pairs 

 of the Flycatchers and two of their nests which were built on the horizontal 

 branches of isolated pitch pines. One of these trees was of rather large size 

 and growing on the top of a knoll just within the boundary fence of Mount 

 Auburn Cemetery, about two hundred yards to the eastward of the tower and 

 nearly opposite the entrance gate of the Cambridge Cemetery ; the other tree, 

 scarce fifteen feet in height, stood on the crest of a low ridge about half a mile 

 to the southwestward near the mouth of Arsenal Brook. The first nest con- 

 tained four eggs which had been incubated only a few days ; the other, three 

 eggs in which the embryos were far advanced. In the same locality, on June 16 

 of the following year (1868), I again found two nests. One, with three fresh 

 eggs, was in an apple tree (an unusual situation), near the extremity of a long, 

 drooping branch and about twelve feet above the surface of a little pond (now 

 partially filled), just behind Mount Auburn; the other, containing two eggs.^ 

 also perfectly fresh, was near the mouth of Arsenal Brook, in the same small 

 pitch pine in which one of the nests of the preceding year had been placed. On 

 both occasions the birds built so very near the ground that I could look into 

 their nest by pulling down the slender branch on which it rested. 



All the eggs just mentioned were taken. None of the birds, however, were 

 molested and, as they were seen or heard in their respective haunts after their 

 nests had been despoiled, I consider it probable that they laid again on each 

 occasion and reared their broods in safety. I was unable to observe them closely 

 after 1868, but my notes show that at least one pair frequented Mount Auburn 

 in the summers of 1869 and 1874. In June of either 1877 or 1878 Mr. M. 

 Abbott Frazar took a nest with three eggs about half a mile to the westward 

 near the Watertown Arsenal, and during the following year he secured another 

 nest in the same locality. Since then no one, so far as I am aware, has noted 

 the Olive-sided Flycatcher in the Mount Auburn region, even during migration. 



From 1868 to 1879 inclusive I used to find Olive-sided Flycatchers nearly 

 every season at Waverley, usually during the latter half of May and in or near 

 what is now known as the Beaver Brook Reservation. Some of these birds may 

 have been migrants, lingering for a day or two only before continuing their jour- 

 ney northward, but the behavior of others satisfied me at the time that they were 

 settled for the summer and preparing to breed. Unfortunately most of them 

 were shot, almost as soon as they arrived, by the local collectors of that period. 

 In 1874 a pair almost certainly attempted to nest in some mixed cedar and 

 pitch pine woods on the eastern slope of the hill which extends from Waverley 



1 These eggs with the nest, no. 1780, are still in my possession. 



