214 COOPER'S FLYCATCHER— OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER. 



ascending to her station, she occasionally quivered her wings and tail, erected 

 her blowzy cap, and kept up a whistling, oft-repeated, whining call of pu, 

 pu, then varied to pu, pip, and pip, pu, also at times pip, pip, pu, pip, pip, 

 pip,piu,pu, pip, or tu, tu, tu, and sometimes tu, tu. This shrill, pensive, 

 and quick whistle, sometimes dropped almost to a whisper, or merely pu. 

 The tone is, in fact, much like that of the r phu, phu, phu, of the Fish Hawk. 

 The male, however, besides this note, at long intervals had a call of eh phebee, 

 or K'phebed, almost exactly in the tone of the circular tin whistle or bird 

 call, being loud, shrill, and guttural at the commencement. The nest of this 

 pair I at length discovered in the horizontal branch of a tall red cedar, forty 

 or fifty feet from the ground. It was formed much in the manner of the 

 King-bird's, externally made of interlaced dead twigs of the cedar, internally 

 of wiry stolons of the common cinquefoil, dry grass, and some fragments of 

 branching lichen or usnea. It contained three young, and had probably 

 four e£2;s. The eggs had been hatched about the 20th of June, so that the 

 pair had arrived in this vicinity about the close of May. The young remained 

 in the nest no less than twenty-three days, and were fed from the first on 

 beetles and perfect insects, which appeared to have been wholly digested, 

 without any regurgitation. Towards the close of this protracted period, the 

 young could fly with all the celerity of their parents, and they probably 

 went to and from the nest before abandoning it. The male was at this time 

 extremely watchful, and frequently followed me from his usual residence, 

 after my paying him a visit, nearly half a mile. These birds, which I 

 watched on several successive days, were no way timid, and allowed me for 

 some time previous to visiting their nest, to investigate them and the pre- 

 mises they had chosen, without showing any sign of alarm or particular 

 observation." 



I received from my friend the following additional account, in a letter 

 dated September 12, 1833. "Something serious has happened to our pair of 

 the new Flycatchers (Muscicapa Cooperi), which have for three years at 

 least, bred and passed the summer in the grounds of Mount Auburn. This 

 summer they were no longer seen. It is true they were not very well used 

 last year; for, in the first place, I took two of the four eggs they had laid, 

 when they deserted the nest, and soon, within little more than a stone's- 

 throw, they renewed their labours, and made a second, which was also visit- 

 ed; but from this I believe they raised a small brood. The nest, as before, 

 was placed on a horizontal branch of a red cedar, and made chiefly of the 

 smallest interlaced twigs collected from the dead limbs of the same tree, in 

 all cases so thin, like that of the Tanager, as to let the light readily through 

 its interstices. An egg you have, which, as to size, so completely resembles 

 that of the Wood Pewee, as to make one and the same description serve for 



