Plate XIX. 
Fig. 1. EMPIDOflAX ACADICUS-Acadian Flycatcher. 
The Acadian Flycatcher arrives from the south the last of April, and remains about five months. 
The first nest is built, and the full complement of eggs is deposited, before the beginning of June. 
Early in July a second nest is usually constructed, and I am inclined to believe that a third brood is 
sometimes hatched the latter part of August, for at this season I have found several nests containing 
either partly incubated eggs or very young birds. 
LOCALITY : 
Land timbered with large trees, and overgrown with bushes, low trees, vines, and weeds, is the 
natural home of the Acadian Flycatcher. They love to penetrate the depth of the forest, and delight to 
rear their young in the most quiet and gloomy spots. They rarely, if ever, build in isolated trees, 
though they often resort to the border of woods and the scrubby trees among taller timber along little- 
used wagon-roads. In upland woods throughout the state they build more or less commonly, and even 
in the dry liill-country in the southern counties, the melodious call-note is by no means an unusual 
sound. Throughout the entire course of the Scioto river, which, rising in Hardin county, flows south to 
the Ohio at Portsmouth, I am informed the Acadian Flycatcher is abundant in the summer. I have 
found their nests plenty in the thick, rank vegetation along the river’s banks from Columbus to near its 
mouth. In June, 1880, I saw numbers of nests on low trees, among horse-weeds and nettles, where the 
ground, protected from the sun by the interlacing arms of giant sycamores and elms, is always soft and 
damp. And even upon islands, so low that a rise in the river of two or three feet overflows them, 
I have noticed nests in July, when hunting Woodcock. On account of the various localities inhabited 
one tree is almost likely to afford a nesting-site as another, the only desideratum seems to be a suitably 
situated branch. I have taken nests from the maple, dogwood, oak, hickory, black-haw, thorn, indian- 
arrow, beech, elm, papaw, willow, buckeye, hazel, and wild-grapevine. 
POSITION : 
The nest is usually suspended in a horizontal fork formed by small twigs near the extremity of a 
low, horizontal limb. Sometimes it is built at the bifurcation of a limb of an inch or two in diameter. 
Sometimes, as when in a vine or small bush, it is suspended between two parallel stems. And again, it 
is sometimes built among a number of irregular and twisted twigs. The rim of the nest may be in the 
same horizontal plane as the branches which support it, but commonly the supports touch the nest about 
halfway down the sides, the rim being half an inch or more above them. The bottom of the structure 
is generally free, but occasionally it rests upon a small branch. Ordinarily a canopy of leaves hangs 
immediately above the site, and protects the home and its contents from rain. A nest observed recently 
had three large oak leaves lying like shingles over it, and so close to the rim that they must have 
touched the bird’s head while sitting. The distance of the nest from the ground varies from three to 
twenty feet ; the usual distance is about six feet. 
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