Page:Birdcraft-1897.djvu/291

 while the other, an equally successful apiarist, says that he has never suffered any appreciable loss from this bird They are said to take only drones.

 Crested Flycatcher: Mylarchus crinitus.


 * Length:
 * 8-9 inches.


 * Male and Female:
 * Head feathers forming a pointed crest. Above grayish olive, browner on wings and tail, feathers of former with light edges. Throat gray, below sulphur-yellow, which extends beneath wings. Bill dark, thick, and rather short.


 * Note:
 * Harsh call, somewhat like the Kingbird's.


 * Season:
 * Summer resident; May to September.


 * Breeds:
 * Through its United States range.


 * Nest:
 * In hollow trees and posts, sometimes in abandoned Woodpeckers' holes; made of varied materials, in which snake skins are often found.


 * Eggs:
 * Uniquely marked, ground buff or clay-coloured, marked in various ways with purple, chestnut, and chocolate brown.


 * Range:
 * Eastern United States and southern Canada, west to the Plains, south, in winter, through eastern Mexico to Costa Rica.

This is the great sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, who lines his nest hollow with cast away snake skins. How many little boys, as well as people of larger growth, have worked their hands into the hole of a supposed Woodpecker, only to feel the drying skin of a snake twisted up inside, and have fairly tumbled to the ground, lest the former inhabitant of the skin should be in the vicinity. These birds do not nest as freely in the neighbourhood as the Kingbird, and, though sufficiently pugnacious with their bird kin, keep rather aloof from human society, so that their habits are less familiar. In early May when they arrive, they feed upon ground-beetles, etc., but later in the season frequent the wooded edges of lanes and old pastures, and very little insect life that passes by escapes their snapping gape.

Burroughs, in speaking of the Flycatchers in general, says that "The wild Irishman of them all is the Great-crested Flycatcher, a large leather-coloured or sandy complexioned bird, that prowls through the woods, uttering its harsh, uncanny note, and waging fierce warfare upon its fellows."