150 CANADA FLYCATCHER. 



it is full of spirit, and exceedingly active. It builds a very neat and 

 compact nest, generally in the fork of a small bush, forms it outwardly 

 of moss and flax, or broken hemp, and lines it with hair, and sometimes 

 feathers ; the eggs are five, of a grayish white, with red spots towards 

 the great end. In all parts of the United States, where it inhabits, it 

 is a bird of passage. At Savannah I met with it about the twentieth 

 of March ; so that it probably retires to the West India islands, and 

 perhaps Mexico, during winter. I also heard this bird among the rank 

 reeds and rushes within a few miles of the mouth of the Mississippi. It 

 has been sometimes seen in the neighborhood of Philadelphia ; but 

 rarely ; and on such occasions has all the mute timidity of a stranger, 

 at a distance from home. 



This species is five inches and a half long, and eight in extent ; fore- 

 head, cheeks and chin yellow, surrounded with a hood of black that 

 covers the crown, hind head, and part of the neck, and descends, round- 

 ing, over the breast ; all the rest of the lower parts are rich yellow ; 

 upper parts of the wings, the tail and back, yellow olive ; interior vanes 

 and tips of the wing and tail dusky ; bill black ; legs flesh colored ; 

 inner webs of the three exterior tail feathers white for half their length 

 from the tips ; the next slightly touched with white ; the tail slightly 

 forked, and exteriorly edged with rich yellow olive. 



The female has the throat and breast yellow, slightly tinged with 

 blackish ; the black does not reach so far down the upper part of the 

 neck, and is not of so deep "a tint. In the other parts of her plumage 

 she exactly resembles the male. I have found some females that had 

 little or no black on the head or neck above ; but these I took to be 

 young birds, not yet arrived at their full tints. 



Species XIV. MUSCICAPA CANADENSIS* 



CANADA FLYCATCHEE. 



[Plate XXVI. Fig. 2, Male.] 

 Linn. Syst. Z24.—Arct. Zool. p. 338, No. 273.— Latham, n., 354. 



This is a solitary, and in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, rather a 

 rare species ; being more numerous in the interior, particularly near the 

 mountains, where the only two I ever met with were shot. They are 

 silent birds, as far as I could observe ; and were busily darting among 



* Sylvia pardalina, Bonaparte 06*. No. 126. — Ibid. Synop. No. 108. 



