Flight- 
song of the 
Wood Pewee 
The young now show their heads and twitter when they 
hear the old one approaching. She does not enter the hole 
except now and then to remove a snow-white excrement sack 
which she carries fifty or sixty yards before dropping it. 
Altogether I know no more attractive birds than nesting 
Tree Swallows with young. 
One of the Wood Pewees (the male, I suppose) of the 
pair which always nests in the big trees about our farm¬ 
house appeared at sunset this evening at a height of about 
fifty feet above the open space formed by the flower 
garden, flying in small, irregular circles on a perfectly 
level plane, calling pee- ee-e, wit 'l.- v/it '1; pee- ee-e. 
wit * 1-wit *1 a dozen times or more. I have no doubt this 
was a true flight song which I cannot remember ever seeing 
the Wood Pewee perform before, although I may have done 
so and forgotten it. While circling and calling thus, the 
bird bent his wings rather slowly and steadily and kept 
his tail wide-spread. I hear his short, plaintive pee-ee- e 
(and sometimes the impatient wit '1 also) of the "dying 
fall" form of it, in our tall elms at all hours of the day 
from dawn to late into the evening twilight. Perhaps 
there is no sound more pleading and restful to the senses 
in all Nature. 
While Gilbert and I were at Ball's Hill tfcis 
morning, he called my attention to a nest which he had just 
