414 
THE RED-EYED FLYCATCHER. 
together a tolerably stout fabric of loose hay, guinea-fowl feathers, 
dogs' hair, hogs' bristles, and pieces of cast snake-skiu. The last- 
named appears to be "an indispensable article, " and is present in every 
nest. Why ? Ah ! that is a problem in ornithology which no one 
seems able to solve. It may be hung out like " banners on the outer 
wall," to prevent other birds or animals from intruding ; or it may be 
that the silken softness of the snake-slough is acceptable to the young. 
The reader is welcome to either conjecture. 
A very different kind of nest is that of the red-eyed flycatcher; 
a bird which ranges from Georgia to the river St. Lawrence, and is 
quite distinguished for the vigour, vivacity, and sonorousness of his 
song, which rises above that of all the other summer minstrels, and 
rings like a clarion-strain through the echoing avenues of the forest. 
His notes break up into short emphatic bars, of two, three, or four 
syllables ; and in Jamaica are supposed to represent the words, " whip- 
tom-kelly," whence the popular name of the bird. 
He builds, does " whip-tom-kell}^" a small, neat, pensile nest, 
generally suspended between two twigs of a young dogwood or other 
small sapling, at an elevation of not more than four or five feet from 
the ground. The materials employed are fragments of hornets' nests, 
a little flax, shreds of withered leaves, slips of vine bark, and pieces of 
paper; the whole agglutinated into a firm compact mass with the silk 
of caterpillars and tlie bird's own saliva. Inside, the nest is lined and 
carpeted with fine slips of grape-vine bark, fibrous grass, and some- 
times hair. So durable is the motley structure, that it frequently 
outbraves the atmospheric changes of a whole twelvemonth, and is 
sometimes occupied by mice after its owner has abandoned it. 
Of the white-eyed flycatcher we are told that he builds an 
exceedingly neat little nest, which generally assumes a conical shape, 
and is suspended by its rim to the circular bend of a prickly vine, or 
smilax, which grows in low thickets. So great a favourite is this plant, 
that the bird seldom builds anywhere else. He is very jealous of any 
intrusion on his domesticit}' ; and when a stranger approaches flies out 
