442 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
In the fall migration, it was first noted, August 16, 1886, at Apache (Anthony); 
and in the spring, it arrived at Silver City, April 26,1881 (Marsh).— W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —Saddled on a limb or built against a trunk 20-50 feet from the ground, 
resembling that of the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, being small, deep, and compact, 
made of dried grasses, vegetable fibers, and spiders’ silk, with sometimes a few 
feathers. Eggs: 3-4, pale buff or dull whitish, immaculate. 
General Habits. —In the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona, Mr. 
Lusk found several nests of the Buff-breasted Flycatcher containing 
bright feathers; among them some yellow ones of the Audubon Warbler 
and a blue one of the Chestnut-backed Bluebird. A barred feather of a 
Whippoorwill neighbor also added interest to the collection. In the lower 
country where lizards climbed up the trunks of the sycamores, the nests 
were built out on the branches; but on the edges of the mountain parks 
where there were no lizards but many jays, the bark-colored nests were 
built against a tree trunk “in fifty per cent of the cases close in below a 
protecting stub,” where they were well hidden (1901, p. 41). 
In the sycamores where Mr. Lusk found an attractive small pair, he 
says, the breasts shone buff in the warm sunlight, flies were plentiful, and 
“every now and then the soft pit, pit , of the two, as they kept good 
account of each other's whereabouts, was varied by the chicky-whew of 
the male” (1901, p. 38). A variety of notes and ventriloquial calls add to 
the interest of the study of this rare little bird. 
Additional Literature.—Willard, F. C., Condor, XXV, 189-194, 1923. 
COUES FLYCATCHER: Myi6chanes pertinax pallidiventris (Chapman) 
Description. — Length: 7.7-8 inches, wing 3.S-4.4, tail 3.6-3.9. Adults: Upper- 
parts deep smoke-gray , chest uniform lighter gray, belly whitish or pale huffy yellowish; 
bill black above, yellow below. Young: Slightly darker, more olivaceous above, 
the upper tail coverts tipped with brown or buffy, and wings with two brown or 
buffy bands, underparts suffused with pale buffy; lower mandible and mouth 
orange-yellow. 
Comparisons. —The Coues Flycatcher, about the size and general coloration 
of the Olive-sided may be distinguished from it by its uniformly , unstreaked dark 
chest and less conspicuous cottony flank tufts. (See p. 445.) 
Range. —Mountains of central Arizona and western New Mexico south through 
Chihuahua, Sonora, and Durango to Tepic. 
State Records. —In the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona the Coues Fly¬ 
catcher is a common summer resident almost to the New Mexico line. A few birds 
pass east into New Mexico and one taken July 16, 1876, at Fort Bayard by Mr. 
Stephens was identified in the Biological Survey. The species was met in June, 
1876, in the Zuni Mountains (Aiken); and a specimen taken July 10, just over the 
line in the White Mountains of Arizona.—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. Preferably in conifers in the open but also in deciduous trees nearly 
hidden in foliage; deeply cupped, composed mostly of grasses, with some leaves, 
web, and catkins, covered with fragments of moss, lichens, and cobwebs. Eggs: 
3, creamy buff, sparsely spotted with reddish browns and lilac tending to wreathe 
about the larger end. 
