are half a dozen more species of waaeee in the Northwest, 
but by the time the student knows the common ones he can | 
go to more scientific bird books for help. This book must 
- choose the birds that a beginner will more easily see. 
It would be unfair, however, not to tell you that several 
of the flycatcher group of birds also work as tree police 
in this section, for, while they do not search on leaf, twig or 
stem for their food, woe be to the insect that flits about if 
any member of this family gets an eye on it! There will be 
a jump, a flutter of wings, a click of snapping mandibles 
from a shadow on a lower branch, and one more tree enemy 
will have vanished to become flycatcher bone, muscle, or 
feather. They do not confine themselves to living in trees 
and shrubbery, for lonely is the treeless ranch of the Inland 
Empire if a kingbird or a phoebe om not taken a liking to 
its stable or henhouse. | 
Probably the first bird of this eroup that you will 
recognize is the Western Flycatcher, which so _ closely 
resembles the lights and shadows of places it best loves in 
its sombre, gray, brownish-olive body, brightened up a bit | 
with its broad yellowish-white eye rings and two distinct — 
grayish wing bands. An observer would be apt to pass by 
his five or six inches, except in nesting season, he blends 
so well with the shadows of the trees, if he were not so 
persistent in giving his slow, wiry whistle wherever he 
happens to be. At first glance he might seem to be a vireo, 
_ but he is too dark, his neck is too short, he seems to have 
a very small crest, and he has such a very different call: a 
combination of “p-s-t, t-s-p, t-s-i-p”’. | 
When the spring fever attacks the i cxtern Flycatcher, 
he seems to lose his usual good judgment, for he often picks 
out some dangerous place near man for his nest. One was 
found in a stable just above the munching cows, another 
In plain sight under a porch, and this year the mass of twigs, 
grasses and green moss in the electric light meter box of the 
AG 
