890 
HOODED FLYCATCHER. 
now and then uttering three loud, not unmusical, and very 
lively notes, resembling twee , twee , twitchie , while engaged 
in the chase. Like almost all its tribe, 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 20th 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 neighbourhood of Phila- 
delphia, 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 ; forehead, cheeks, and chin, yellow, surrounded with 
a hood of black, that covers the crown, hind head, and part of 
the neck, and descends, rounding, 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 
coloured ; 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. 
