Dusky, Gray, and Slate-colored 
When not domesticated, as these birds are rapidly becoming, 
the phcebes dearly love a cool, wet woodland retreat. Here they 
hunt and bathe ; here they also build in a rocky bank or ledge of 
rocks or underneath a bridge, but always with clever adaptation 
of their nest to its surroundings, out of which it seems a natural 
growth. Itis oneof the most finished, beautiful nests ever found. 
A pair of phoebes become attached to a spot where they 
have once nested; they never stray far from it, and return to it 
regularly, though they may not again occupy the old nest. This 
is because it soon becomes infested with lice from the hen’s 
feathers used in lining it, for which reason too close relationship 
with this friendly bird-neighbor is discouraged by thrifty house- 
keepers. When the baby birds have come out from the four or 
six little white eggs, their helpless bodies are mercilessly attacked 
by parasites, and are often so enfeebled that half the brood die. 
The next season another nest will be built near the first, the fol- 
lowing summer still another, until it would appear that a colony 
of birds had made their homes in the place. 
Throughout the long summer—for as the pheebe is the first 
flycatcher to come, so it is the last to go—the bird is a tireless 
hunter of insects, which it catches on the wing with a sharp click 
of its beak, like the other members of its dexterous family. 
Say’s Phaebe (Savornis saya) is the Western representative 
of the Eastern species, which it resembles in coloring and many 
of its habits. It is the bird of the open plains, a tireless hunter 
in midair sallies from an isolated perch, and has the same vibrat- 
ing motion of the tail that the Eastern phoebe indulges in when 
excited. This bird differs chiefly in its lighter coloring, but not 
in habits, from the black pewee of the Pacific slope. 
Great-crested Flycatcher 
(Myiarchus crinitus) Flycatcher family 
Called also: CRESTED FLYCATCHER 
Length—8.50 to g inches. A little smaller than the robin. 
Male and Female—Feathers of the head pointed and erect. Upper 
parts dark grayish-olive, inclining to rusty brown on wings 
and tail. Wing coverts crossed with two irregular bars of 
yellowish white. Throat gray, shading into sulphur-yellow 
72 
