FLYCATCHERS: SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER 421 
Except for a quieter manner, as he says, its habits are similar to those 
of the Arkansas, with whom it often shares the roadside telephone and 
telegraph wires. 
At Lake Burford Doctor Wetmore found the Cassin frequenting 
“rocky hillsides, where scattered yellow pines rising above the low 
undergrowth, made convenient perches from which to watch for insects 
and look out over the valleys. The birds nested here in small numbers 
and males were seen at intervals in crazy zigzag sky dances made to the 
accompaniment of harsh calls and odd notes. . . . Toward dusk they 
called constantly, their harsh, stirring notes making a pleasing sound 
that mingled with the songs of Western House and Rock Wrens, the 
scolding of an occasional Mockingbird and the cheerful calls of the 
Robins” (1920a, p. 400). 
When migrating, Mr. Aiken says, the Cassin is found in parks in the 
foothills, “alighting upon weed stalks and low bushes from which it 
sallies forth after insects” (in Henshaw, 1875, p. 344). On the Wheeler 
Survey, Mr. Henshaw found it on the sides of open brushy ravines and 
especially on the edges of sagebrush plains. 
Both Cassin and Arkansas are accused of killing bees, but one of the 
Cassin taken within a few hundred feet of an apiary, as Professor Merrill 
testifies, had “not one bee in its gizzard, which was filled with small 
grasshoppers and moths” (MS). 
In the Pecos Valley between Roswell and Fort Sumner, when Mr. 
Ligon visited it, he says there was “scarcely a tree on the river but con¬ 
tained a nest of this bird,” which, perhaps from necessity rather than 
choice, selects some peculiar places for its nests. Like the Arkansas, 
one of its favorite sites is the ‘ V’ of a milepost along the railway lines. 
Fifty miles north of Roswell, Mr. Ligon found a nest “in a windmill 
tower ... set between the tower posts and against the revolving pipe 
just underneath the machinery, and where the mill was turning past it, 
sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other” (MS). 
SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER: Muscivora forficata (Gmclin) 
Description. — Male: Length about 12 to 15 inches, wing 4.4-5.1, tail 7 to 10 
inches, wing with one quill deeply cut at tip. Adult male: Foreparts hoary ash, 
paler on throat, the crown with a small concealed patch of orange'or scarlet; back 
and scapulars usually more or less suffused with pinkish or salmon; upper tail 
coverts blackish, edged with grayish; tail deeply forked , feathers of fork, white, 
usually tinged with salmon pink and tipped with black, middle feathers, black; wings 
dusky, with light edgings; under wing coverts salmon, axillars scarlet; sides and 
flanlcsfrom salmon pink to blood red. Adult female: Similar but crown patch wanting 
or obsolete, coloration usually duller, sometimes partly orange-buff, and fork of 
tail shorter. Young: Upperparts brownish gray, crown darker, concealed patch 
wanting; sides, flanks, belly, and under tail coverts uniform cream-buff, red axillar 
patch wanting. 
