1 1 8 YELL W- THR OA TED EL YCA TCHER. 



during an agreeable effect, particularly during the burning 

 heat of noon, when almost every other songster but these two 

 is silent. Those who loiter through the shades of our magni- 

 ficent forests at that hour, will easily recognise both species. 

 It arrives from the south early in May ; and returns again 

 with its young about the middle of September. Its nest, which 

 is sometimes fixed on the upper side of a limb, sometimes on 

 a horizontal branch among the twigs, generally on a tree, is 

 composed outwardly of thin strips of the bark of grape vines, 

 moss, lichens, &c, and lined with fine fibres of such-like 

 substances ; the eggs, usually four, are white, thinly dotted 

 with black, chiefly near the great end. Winged insects are 

 its principal food. 



Whether this species has been described before or not, I 

 must leave to the sagacity of the reader who has the oppor- 

 tunity of examining European works of this kind to discover.* 

 I have met with no description in Pennant, Buffon, or Latham, 

 that will properly apply to this bird, which may perhaps be 

 owing to the imperfection of the account, rather than igno- 

 rance of the species, which is by no means rare. 



The yellow-throated flycatcher is five inches and a half long, 

 and nine inches from tip to tip of the expanded wings ; the 

 upper part of the head, sides of the neck, and the back, are 

 of a fine yellow olive ; throat, breast, and line over the eye, 

 which it nearly encircles, a delicate lemon yellow, which, in a 

 lighter tinge, lines the wings ; belly and vent, pure silky 

 white ; lesser wing-coverts, lower part of the back and rump, 

 ash ; wings, deep brown, almost black, crossed with two white 

 bars ; primaries edged with light ash, secondaries with white; 

 tail a little forked, of the same brownish black with the winsrs, 

 the three exterior feathers edged on each vane with white ; 

 legs and claws, light blue ; the two exterior toes united to the 

 middle one, as far as the second joint ; bill, broad at the base, 

 with three or four slight bristles, the upper mandible over- 

 hanging the lower at the point, near which it is deeply notched; 

 * See orange-throated warbler, Latham, Syn. ii. 481, 103. 



