THE FLYCATCHERS 
W HEN you see a dusky bird, smaller than 
a robin, lighter gray underneath than 
on its sooty-brown back, with a well-rounded, 
erect head, set on a short, thick neck, you may 
safely guess it is one of the flycatchers — an- 
other strictly American family. If the bird 
has a white band across the end of its tail it is 
probably the fearless kingbird. If the feathers 
on top of its head look as if they had been 
brushed the wrong way into a pointed crest; 
moreover, if some chestnut colour shows in its 
tail when spread, and its pearly gray breast 
shades into yellow underneath, you are looking 
at the noisy “wild Irishman” of birddom, the 
crested flycatcher. Confiding Phoebe wears 
the plainest of dull clothes with a still darker, 
dusky crown cap, and a line of white on her 
outer tail feathers. She and the plaintive 
wood pewee, who has two indistinct whitish 
bars across her extra-long wings, are scarcely 
larger than an English sparrow; while the least 
flycatcher, who calls himself Chebec, is, as you 
may suppose, the smallest member of the 
tribe to leave the tropics and spend the summer 
with us. Male and female members of this 
