4i8 
FLYCATCHERS. 
instances I have known a pair, when the nest and eggs were 
taken by some mischievous boys, commence a new nest in 
the same place, and laying a smaller number of eggs, raised 
a second brood. In one of those nests, under a bridge, the 
insidious Cowbird had also dropped her parasitic egg. 
Towards the time of their departure for the South, which is 
about the middle of October, they are silent, and previously 
utter their notes more seldom, as if mourning the decay of 
Nature, and anticipating the approaching famine which now 
urges their migration. In the Middle States they raise two 
broods in the season ; but in Massachusetts the Pewit rarely 
raises more than a single brood, unless, as in the instance re- 
lated, they have had the misfortune to lose the first hatch. 
The young, dispersed through the woods in small numbers, 
may now and then be heard to the close of September exer- 
cising their feeble voices in a guttural pMbe. But the old birds 
are almost wholly silent, or but little heard, as they flit timidly 
through the woods, when once released from the cares of rear- 
ing their infant brood ; so that here the Phoebe’s note is almost 
a concomitant of spring and the mildest opening of summer, — 
it is, indeed, much more vigorous in April and May than at 
any succeeding period. 
The Phcebe is an uncommon bird in the Maritime Provinces, 
but more common in the vicinity of Montreal and westward to 
Western Ontario, and in ali the Eastern States. It winters in 
the Gulf States as well as in Cuba and Mexico. 
Note. — Mr. G. S. Miller, Jr., captured on Cape Cod, in Sep- 
tember, 1889, an example of Say’s Phcebe (Sayornis sayd), the first 
that has been taken to the eastward of the Great Plains. 
