Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/213

Rh The places chosen by the Great Crested Flycatcher for its nest are so peculiar, and the composition of its fabric is so very different from that of all others of the genus with which I am acquainted, that perhaps no one on seeing it for the first time, would imagine it to belong to a Fly-catcher. There is nothing of the elegance of some, or of the curious texture of others, displayed in it. Unlike its kinsfolk, it is contented to seek a retreat in the decayed part of a tree, of a fence-rail, or even of a prostrate log mouldering on the ground. I have found it placed in a short stump at the bottom of a ravine, where the tracks of racoons were as close together as those of a flock of sheep in a fold, and again in the lowest fence-rail, where the black snake could have entered it, sucked the eggs or swallowed the young with more ease than by ascending to some large branches of a tree forty feet from the ground, where after all the reptile not unfrequently searches for such dainties. In all those situations, our bird seeks a place for its nest, which is composed of more or fewer materials, as the urgency may require, and I have observed that in the nests nearest the ground, the greatest quantity of grass, fibrovis roots, feathers, hair of different quadrupeds, and exuviae of snakes was accumulated. The nest is at all times a loose mass under the above circumstances. Sometimes, when at a great height, very few materials are used, and in more than one instance I found the eggs merely deposited on the decaying particles of the wood, at the bottom of a hole in a broken branch of a tree, sometimes of one that had been worked out by the grey squirrel. The eggs are from four to six, of a pale cream colour, thickly streaked with deep purplish-brown of different tints, and, I believe, seldom more than a single brood is raised in the season.

The Great Crested Flycatcher arrives in Louisiana and the adjacent country in March. Many remain there and breed, but the greater number advance towards the Middle States, and disperse among the lofty woods, preferring at all times sequestered places. I have thought that they gave a preference to the high lands, and yet I have often observed them in the low sandy woods of New Jersey. Louisiana, and the countries along the Mississippi, together with the State of Ohio, are the districts most visited by this species in one direction, and in another the Atlantic States as far as Massachusetts. In this last, however, it is very seldom met with unless in the vicinity of the mountains, where occasionally some are found breeding. Farther eastward it is entirely unknown.

Tyrannical perhaps in a degree surpassing the King Bird itself, it