COMMON BIRDS: SECOND SERIES. 
5 
Least Flycatcher, or Chebec. 7. 
[empidonax minimus.] 
The Chebec, or Least Flycatcher, returns to New England 
about the end of April. It is almost as domestic as the Phoebe, 
building its nest in the farm or village trees, cr in orchards or 
groves on the borders of fields. The nest is very neatly built, of 
fine materials woven together with cottony or woolly substances, 
and placed generally on a small limb. The eggs are four, and 
white, and are laid about the first week of June. The emphatic 
note che-bec ' , from which the bird gets its name, is snapped out so 
forcibly that the bird’s head is at the same time violently jerked. 
This note is repeated almost incessantly till July, but is rarely heard 
in August. Both sexes have a sharp whit , and a little gurgling 
note, which often accompanies the flirting of wings and tail incident 
to settling on a new perch. The food of the Least Flycatcher 
consists almost entirely of winged insects caught by a sally from 
some exposed twig. The bird winters in Central America. 
Cowbird. 19 ♦ 
[molothrus ater.] 
Few people interested in birds have not heard the story of the 
female Cowbird’s shiftlessness and meanness. Though many of its 
relatives are noted for their skill in nest-building, and their tender 
care of their young, this member of the family shirks all the labor 
of nesting and rearing her young. The mother skulks in the 
thickets, and in the absence of some vireo, sparrow, or warbler — 
birds smaller than herself — drops her egg in the empty nest. Here 
it hatches, and the young Cowbird is reared at the expense of a 
brood of more attractive birds. The sight of a small sparrow 
kept incessantly busy feeding a great, ugly youngster, bigger than 
herself, is almost pathetic. When the young Cowbird is full grown, 
it joins a flock of its relatives, who have meanwhile spent the sum¬ 
mer lazily feeding, often in cow pastures, where, walking about the 
