WOOD PEWEE. 
287 
a tyrannical disposition, and I have observed one to chase 
a harmless Sparrow to the ground for safety, who merely 
by inadvertence happened to approach the station he had 
temporarily chosen for collecting his insect game. 
The notes of peto-way peto-wdy pee-way are never ut- 
tered by this species; but on the 12th ofFebuary, 1830, 
in Alabama, I heard, at that season, a bird uttering 
this note, and several times afterwards I saw a rather 
large and dark Flycatcher in the Pine woods, to which 
I attributed this call, and which must be a distinct spe- 
cies, as its notes bear no resemblance to those of the 
Wood Pewee, at this season, probably, in South America. 
The Pewee, I believe, raises here but a single brood, 
which are not abroad before the middle of July. The 
nest is extremely neat and curious, almost universally 
saddled upon an old moss-grown and decayed limb in 
an horizontal position, and is so remarkably shallow, and 
incorporated upon the branch, as to be very easily over- 
looked. The body of the fabric consists of wiry grass or 
root fibres, often blended with small branching lichens, 
held together with cob-webs, and caterpillar’s silk, moist- 
ened with saliva ; externally it is so coated over with blue- 
ish crustaceous lichens as to be hardly discernible from 
the moss upon the tree. It is lined with finer root fibres 
or slender grass-stalks. Some nests are, however, 
scarcely lined at all, being so thin as readily to admit the 
light through them, and are often very lousy with a spe- 
cies of acarus , which probably infests the old birds. The 
eggs, 3 or 4, are of a yellow cream-color, spotted and 
blotched, though not profusely, towards the great end with 
two shades of lilac, and dark brown. 
The Wood Pewee is about 6 inches in length; alar extent 10. 
Above dusky olive. Head, as usual, partly crested, brownish black. 
Below pale yellowish, inclining to white. Tail forked. The female 
a little smaller. 
