Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/129



The great similarity as to form, size, tone of voice, and general colouring, that exists between the Wood Pewee, Traill's Flycatcher, the Muscicapa acadica of, and a smaller species, which I found abundant in Labrador, and which has been beautifully figured and described in the Fauna Boreali-Americana of my friends Swainson and Richardson, uiider the name of Tyrannula Richardsonii, renders it difficult to indicate their distinctive characters. The student finds it difficult to recognise them; and indeed, unless familiar with their habits, it is not easy for any one to distinguish them at first sight, nor can the observer be sure of the species, without paying very close attention to their notes, and the various peculiarities of their manners. Even my learned friend Nuttall has supposed that my Muscicapa Traillii, and Gmelin's M. acadica, are the same, and has expressed his doubts as to the differences between the latter and the smaller species mentioned above, of which I intend, at a future period, to give you some account; although, almost at the same time, he says that he heard a Dark-coloured Flycatcher, apparently larger than that represented in the plate, in the pine forest of South Carolina, which was unknown to him, but which I have established to be the M. Traillii. If doubts on the subject exist in the mind of such an observer as Nuttall, who has examined the species both in the living and dead state, in the very places which these birds frequent, how difficult must it be for a "closet naturalist" to ascertain the true distinctions of these birds, when, having no better samples of the species than some dried skins, perhaps mangled, and certainly distorted, with shrivelled bills and withered feet.

It is in the darkest and most gloomy retreats of the forest that the Wood Pewee is generally to be found, during the season which it spends with us. You may find it, however, lurking for a while in the shade of an overgrown orchard; or, as autumn advances, you may see it gleaning the benumbed insects over the slimy pools, or gliding on the outskirts of the woods, when, for the last time, the piping notes of the Bullfrog