FLYCATCHERS: CASSIN KINGBIRD 
419 
mostly in larger trees in the valley, and on double cross arms of tele¬ 
phone, telegraph, and electric light poles. Several nests on the campus 
are in open sight above the heads of passersby. One examined was 
made wholly of strings, the heavier being on the outside and the finer on 
the inside; the lining of feathers. The young are flying out in the first 
week in July” (MS). 
The conveniences of civilization are accepted with common sense. 
One nest is reported on a telegraph pole not thirty feet from a station 
where ten trains passed every day, and Mr. Ligon finds that a favorite 
nesting place is in the V’s of the mile boards on telegraph poles along 
the railway. Two nests found by Mr. Swarth show how easily the birds 
become accustomed to people. One was on a gate post close to the 
passersby, and the other on a post about three feet from the ground not 
more than ten feet from a bench by a house “where six or eight men 
washed three times daily, each time considering it their duty to see how 
the Kingbird family duties were progressing. In spite of their scrutiny 
the eggs hatched . . . and there was every prospect that the young 
would prosper” (1911b, pp. 161-162). 
A story of a pet Arkansas Kingbird that spent two months with the 
men of the Wheeler Survey as they moved from camp to camp, even 
flying along on a hunting trip to the mountains, is delightfully told by 
Mr. Ridgway. Its insatiable appetite for grasshoppers led to a test, 
each member of the party keeping count of those fed to it one day, the 
result being that one hundred and twenty were reported! After having 
three such pets, Mr. Ridgway said that he knew of “no other bird so 
easily tamed, or which so thoroughly enjoys the society and protection 
of human beings, when once domesticated” (1877, pp. 528-532). 
CASSIN KINGBIRD: Tyrannus vociferans Swainson 
Plate 41 
Description. — Length: About 8.7-9 inches, wing 5-5.4, tail 3.7-4.‘2. Tips of 
longest primaries abruptly nicked in male, not distinctly, if at all cut out in female. 
Adults: Foreparts dark gray, chin abruptly white; crown with concealed orange-red 
patch (usually restricted in female); back olive-gray, tail black or brownish black 
tipped with lighter; outer web of outside feather grayish brown, narrowly edged 
with paler; wings grayish brown, largely edged with whitish; under wing and tail 
coverts , like belly, canary yellow. Young: Similar to adults but crown without 
color patch, wing markings buffy, and coloration duller. (See Arkansas Kingbird, 
Comparisons, p. 416.) 
Range. —Breeds mostly in Upper Sonoran Zone from southwestern California 
and southern Wyoming south to western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mich- 
oacan; winters from southern California and northern Mexico to Guatemala; 
casual in Oregon and northern California. 
State Records. —The breeding range of the Cassin Kingbird extends up into 
the yellow pines of the Zuni Mountains, where it was taken June 26, 1909, on 
Bear Ridge at about 8,000 feet (Goldman); a month later, July 23, 1905, it was 
