Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/459

Rh charging this curious piece, I discovered that it was flintless ! We were nearly a mile distant from Mr Perkins"' house, but as we were resolved to have the bird, we proceeded to it with all dispatch, procured a gun, and returning to the tree, found the Flycatcher, examined its flight and manners for a while, and at length shot it. As the representative of a species, I made a drawing of this individual, which you will find copied in the plate indicated above. But now let us attend to Nuttall's ac- count.

"This undescribed species, which appertains to the group of Pewees, was obtained in the woods of Sweet Auburn, in this vicinity, by Mr John Bethune of Cambridge, on the 7th of June 1830. This and the second specimen acquired soon afterwards, were females on the point of incubation. A third individual of the same sex was killed on the 21st of June 1831. They were aU of them fat, and had their stomach filled with torn fragments of wild bees, wasps, and other similar insects. I have watched the motions of two other living individuals, who appeared tyrannical and quarrelsome, even with each other. The attack was always accompanied with a whining querulous twitter. Their dispute was apparently, like that of savages, about the rights of their respective hunting-grounds. One of the birds, the female, whom I usually saw alone, was uncommonly sedentary. The territory she seemed determined to claim was circumscribed by the tops of a cluster of Virginian junipers or red cedars, and an adjoining elm and decayed cherry-tree. From this sovereign station, in the solitude of a barren and sandy piece of forest, adjoining Sweet Auburn, she kept a sharp look-out for passing insects, and pursued them with great vigour and success as soon as they appeared, sometimes chasing them to the ground, and generally resuming her perch with an additional mouthful, which she swallowed at leisure. On ascending to her station, she occasionally quivered her wings and tail, erected her blowzy cap, and kept up a whisthng, oft-repeated, whining call, o^ pu, pu, then varied to pit, pip, and pip, pit, also at times pip, pip, pu, pip, pip, pip, pu, pu, pip, or ta, til, til, and sometimes til, til. This shrill, pensive, and quick whistle, sometimes dropped almost to a whisper, or merely pU. The tone is, in fact, much like that of the phU, phii, phu, of the Fish Hawk. The male, however, besides this note, at long intervals had a call of eh phebee, or JCphebea, almost exactly in the tone of the circular tin whistle or bird call, being loud, shrill, and guttural at the commencement. The nest of this pair 1 at length discovered in the horizontal branch of a tall red cedar, forty or