150 
CANADA FLYCATCHER. 
it is full of spirit, and exceedingly active. It builds a very neat and 
compact nest, generally in the fork of a small bush, forms it outwardly 
of moss and flax, or broken hemp, and lines it with hair, and sometimes 
feathers ; the eggs are five, of a grayish white, with red spots towards 
the great end. In all parts of the United States, where it inhabits, it 
is a bird of passage. At Savannah I met with it about the twentieth 
of March ; so that it probably retires to the West India islands, and 
perhaps Mexico, during winter. I also heard this bird among the rank 
reeds and rushes within a few miles of the mouth of the Mississippi. It 
has been sometimes seen in the neighborhood of Philadelphia ; but 
rarely ; and on such occasions has all the mute timidity of a stranger, 
at a distance from home. 
This species is five inches and a half long, and eight in extent ; fore- 
head, cheeks and chin yellow, surrounded with a hood of black that 
covers the crown, hind head, and part of the neck, and descends, round- 
ing, over the breast ; all the rest of the lower parts are rich yellow ; 
upper parts of the wings, the tail and back, yellow olive ; interior vanes 
and tips of the wing and tail dusky ; bill black ; legs flesh colored ; 
inner webs of the three exterior tail feathers white for half their length 
from the tips ; the next slightly touched with white ; the tail slightly 
forked, and exteriorly edged with rich yellow olive. 
The female has the throat and breast yellow, slightly tinged with 
blackish ; the black does not reach so far down the upper part of the 
neck, and is not of so deep a tint. In the other parts of her plumage 
she exactly resembles the male. I have found some females that had 
little or no black on the head or neck above ; but these I took to be 
young birds, not yet arrived at their full tints. 
Species XIV. MUSCICAPA CANADENSIS* 
CANADA FLYCATCHER. 
[Plate XXVI. Fig. 2. Male.] 
Linn. Stjst. 324. — Arct. Zool. p. 338, No. 273. — Latham, ii., 354. 
This is a solitary, and in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, rather a 
rare species ; being more numerous in the interior, particularly near the 
mountains, where the only two I ever met with were shot. They are 
silent birds, as far as I could observe ; and were busily darting among 
* Sylvia pardalina, Bonaparte Obs. No. 126. — Ibid. Synop. No. 108. 
