The Wright Flycatcher 
half-prominent station, and they may occasionally be heard in the depths 
of the forest—in marked contrast to the lazier, drawling tones of the 
Western (E. difficilis). I have one down also for an emphatic swee chew, 
but the chances are ten to one that a Brewster Flycatcher slipped in on 
me unawares. 
In the summer of 1906 Mr. Bowles and I found these flycatchers 
nesting on a fashionable hillside section of Spokane. In two instances the 
birds were building out in the open, after the fashion of the Western Wood 
Pewee (Myiochanes richardsoni): one on the bare limb of a horse-chestnut 
tree some ten feet from the ground; the other upon an exposed elbow of a 
picturesque horizontal limb of a pine tree at a height of some sixty feet. 
A few miles further north we located a nearly completed nest of this species 
on the 20th of May, and returned on the 1st of June to complete accounts. 
The nest was placed seven feet from the trunk of a tall fir tree, and at a 
height of forty feet. The bird was sitting, and when frightened dived 
headlong into the nearest thicket, where she skulked silently during our 
entire stay. The nest proved to be a delicate creation of the finest 
vegetable materials, weathered leaves, fibers, grasses, etc., carefully 
inwrought, and a considerable quantity of the orange-colored bracts of 
young fir trees. The lining was of hair, fine grass, bracts, and a single 
feather. In position the nest might well have been that of a Wood 
Pewee; but, although it was deeply cupped, it was much broader, and so, 
relatively flatter. The four fresh eggs which it contained were of a 
delicate cream-color, changing to pure white upon blowing. 
No. 175 
Wright’s Flycatcher 
A. 0 . U. No. 469. Empidonax wrighti Baird. 
Synonym.— Little Gray Flycatcher. 
Description. —Similar to E. hammondi, but averaging slightly larger; grayer 
and with less of olivaceous above; lighter and less extensively gray-washed below; the 
web of outer rectrix paler gray; the first outermost primary shorter than the 6th; the 
bill larger and decidedly broader. Adult (gray phase): Above dull bluish gray or 
grayish dusky, faintly olivaceous on back and sides; throat and breast pale gray to 
whitish, with admixture of ill-concealed dusky; remaining parts, posteriorly, faintly 
tinged with pale primrose; a whitish eye-ring; wing-markings, of the same pattern as 
in other species, or more extensive on secondaries and outer webs of tertials, definitely 
white; outer web of outermost rectrix pale grayish white. Adult (yellow-bellied 
phase): As in gray phase, but underparts strongly tinged with yellow, and upper- 
parts faintly tinged with olive-green; wing-markings less purely white. Bill blackish 
above, more or less pale below, and dusky-tipped, or sometimes entirely dusky—quite 
variable in this respect. Young birds are whitish below and the wing-bands are buffy, 
