306 WHITE-E YED EL YCA TCHER. 



WHITE-EYED FLYCATCHER. {Muscicapa cantatrix) 



PLATE XVIII.— Fig. 6. 



Muscicapa noveboracensis, Gmel. Syst. i. p. 947. — Hanging Flycatcher, Lath. 

 Syn. Supp. p. 174. — Arct. Zool. p. 389, No. 274.— Muscicapa cantatrix, the 

 Little Domestic Flycatcher, or Green Wren, Bartram, p. 290. — Peak's 

 Museum, No. 6778. 



VIREO NOVEBORA CENSIS. — Bonapakte. 



Vireo noveboracensis, Bonap. Synop. p. 70. — The White-Eyed Flycatcher, or 

 Vireo, Aud. pi. 63, male, Om. Biog. i. p. 328. 



This is another of the cow bird's adopted nurses, a lively, 

 active, and sociable little bird, possessing a strong voice for 

 its size, and a great variety of notes, and singing, with little 

 intermission, from its first arrival, about the middle of April, 

 till a little before its departure in September. On the 27th 

 of February, I heard this bird in the southern parts of the 

 State of Georgia, in considerable numbers, singing with great 

 vivacity. They had only arrived a few days before. Its 

 arrival in Pennsylvania, after an interval of seven weeks, 

 is a proof that our birds of passage, particularly the smaller 

 species, do not migrate at once from south to north ; but pro- 

 gress daily, keeping company, as it were, with the advances 

 of spring. It has been observed in the neighbourhood of 

 Savannah so late as the middle of November ; and probably 

 winters in Mexico and the West Indies. 



This bird builds a very neat little nest, often in the figure 

 of an inverted cone ; it is suspended by the upper edge of the 

 two sides, on the circular bend of a prickly vine, — a species 

 of smilax that generally grows in low thickets. Outwardly, 

 it is constructed of various light materials, bits of rotten wood, 

 fibres of dry stalks of weeds, pieces of paper, commonly news- 

 papers, an article almost always found about its nest, so that 

 some of my friends have given it the name of the Politician ; 

 all these substances are interwoven with the silk of caterpillars, 



