210 
THE GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER. 
America, farther north than our boundary lines, before they reach certain 
localities, which we cannot look upon but as being the favourite places of 
rendezvous allotted to those beings for their summer abode. ' 
How wonderful have I thought it that all birds which migrate are not 
equally privileged. Why do not the Turkey-Buzzard, the Fork-tailed 
Hawk, and many others possessing remarkable ease and power of flight, visit 
the same places ? There the Y ulture would find its favourite carrion during 
the heat of the dog-days, and the Hawk abundance of insects. Why do not 
the Pigeons found in the south ever visit the State of Maine, when one 
species, the Columba migratoria, is permitted to ramble over the whole 
extent of our vast country ? And why does the small Pewee go so far north, 
accompanied by the Tyrant Flycatcher ; while the Titirit, larger and strong- 
er than either, remains in the Floridas and Carolinas, and the Great Crested 
Flycatcher, the bird now before you, seldom travels farther east than Con- 
necticut ? Reader, can you assist me ? 
The places chosen by the Great Crested Flycatcher for its nest are so 
peculiar, and the composition of its fabric is so very different from that of all 
others of the genus with which I am acquainted, that perhaps no one, on 
seeing it for the first time, would imagine it to belong to a Flycatcher. 
There is nothing of the elegance of some, or of the curious texture of others, 
displayed in it. Unlike its kinsfolk, it is contented to seek a retreat in the 
decayed part of a tree, of a fence-rail, or even of a prostrate log mouldering 
on the ground. I have found it placed in a short stump at the bottom of a 
ravine, where the tracks of racoons were as close together as those of a flock 
of sheep in a fold ; and again in the lowest fence-rail, where the black snake 
could have entered it, sucked the eggs or swallowed the young with more 
ease than by ascending to some large branches of a tree forty feet from the 
ground, where after all the reptile not unfrequently searches for such dain- 
ties. In all those situations, our bird seeks a place for its nest, which is 
composed of more or fewer materials, as the urgency may require, and I 
have observed that in the nests nearest the ground, the greatest quantity of 
grass, fibrous roots, feathers, the hair of different quadrupeds, and exuviae of 
snakes was accumulated. The nest is at all times a loose mass under the 
above circumstances. Sometimes, when at a great height, very few mate- 
rials are used, and in more than one instance I found the eggs merely 
deposited on the decaying particles of the wood, at the bottom of a hole in a 
broken branch of a tree, sometimes of one that had been worked out by the 
grey-squirrel. The eggs are from four to six, of a pale cream colour, thickly 
streaked with deep purplish-brown of different tints, and, I believe, seldom 
more than a single brood is raised in the season. 
The Great Crested Flycatcher arrives in Louisiana and the adjacent 
