210 THE GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER. 



farther north than our boundary lines, before they reach certain localities, 

 which we cannot look upon but as being the favourite places of rendezvous 

 allotted to these beings for their summer abode. 



How wonderful have I thought it that all birds which migrate are not 

 equally privileged. Why do not the Turkey-Buzzard, the Fork-tailed 

 Hawk, and many others possessing remarkable ease and power of flight, visit 

 the same places? There the Vulture would find its favourite carrion during 

 the heat of the dog-days, and the Hawk abundance of insects. Why do not 

 the Pigeons found in the south ever visit the State of Maine, when one 

 species, the Columba migratoria, is permitted to ramble over the whole 

 extent of our vast country? And why does the small Pewee go so far north, 

 accompanied by the Tyrant Flycatcher; while the Titirit, larger and stronger 

 than either, remains in the Floridas and Carolinas, and the Great Crested 

 Flycatcher, the bird now before you, seldom travels farther east than Con- 

 necticut? Reader, can you assist me? 



The places chosen by the Great Crested Flycatcher for its nest are so 

 peculiar, and the composition of its fabric is so very different from that of all 

 others of the genus with which I am acquainted, that perhaps no one on 

 seeing it for the first time, would imagine it to belong to a Flycatcher. 

 There is nothing of the elegance of some, or of the curious texture of others, 

 displayed in it. Unlike its kinsfolk, it is contented to seek a retreat in the 

 decayed part of a tree, of a fence-rail, or even of a prostrate log mouldering 

 on the ground. I have found it placed in a short stump at the bottom of a 

 ravine, where the tracks of racoons were as close together as those of a flock 

 of sheep in a fold, and again in the lowest fence-rail, where the black snake 

 could have entered it, sucked the eggs or swallowed the young with more 

 ease than by ascending to some large branches of a tree forty feet from the 

 ground, where after all the reptile not unfrequently searches for such dain- 

 ties. In all those situations, our bird seeks a place for its nest, which is 

 composed of more or fewer materials, as the urgency may require, and I 

 have observed that in the nests nearest the ground, the greatest quantity of 

 grass, fibrous roots, feathers, hair of different quadrupeds, and exuviae of 

 snakes was accumulated. The nest is at all times a loose mass under the 

 above circumstances. Sometimes, when at a great height, very few mate- 

 rials are used, and in more than one instance I found the eggs merely de- 

 posited on the decaying particles of the wood, at the bottom of a hole in a 

 broken branch of a tree, sometimes of one that had been worked out by the 

 grey-squirrel. The eggs are from four to six, of a pale cream colour, thick- 

 ly streaked with deep purplish-brown of different tints, and, I believe, sel- 

 dom more than a single brood is raised in the season. 



The Great Crested Flycatcher arrives in Louisiana and the adjacent coun- 



