Part 40

It seems uncalled-for. The bird does not appear to be unhappy. Flycatching is good, and the Pewee cocks his head quite cheerfully as he returns to his perch after a successful foray. But, true to some hidden impulse, as you gaze upon him, he swells with approaching effort, his mandibles part, and he utters that doleful, appointed sound, _dear me_. His utterance has all the precision and finality of an assigned part in an orchestra. It is as if we were watching a single player in a symphony of Nature whose other strains were too subtle for our ears. The player seems inattentive to the music, he eyes the ceiling languidly, he notes a flashing diamond in the second box, he picks a flawed string absently, but at a moment he seizes the bow, gives the cello a vicious double scrape, _dear me_, and his task is done for that time.

The Western Wood Pewee is a late migrant, reaching the middle of the State about the 15th of May, and the northern border from five to ten days later. It is found wherever there is timber, but is partial to half-open situations, and is much more in evidence East than West. It is especially fond of pine groves and rough brushy hillsides near water. Cannon Hill, in Spokane, is a typical resort and a mere tyro can see three or four nests there on a June day.

The Pewee takes the public quite into her confidence in nest building. Not only does she build in the open, without a vestige of leafy cover, but when she is fully freighted with nesting material, she flies straight to the nest and proceeds to arrange it with perfect nonchalance. If a nest with eggs is discovered in the bird’s absence, she is quite likely to return and settle to her eggs without a troubled thought.

The nest is a moderately deep, well-made cup of hemp, fine bark-strips, grasses, and similar soft substances; and it is usually saddled upon a horizontal limb of pine, larch, maple, alder, oak, aspen, cottonwood, etc. But, occasionally, the nest is set in an upright crotch of a willow or some dead sapling. Nests having such support are naturally deeper than saddled nests, but the characteristic feature of both sorts is the choice of a site, quite removed from the protection of leaves. The grayish tone of the bark in the host tree is always accurately matched in the choice of nesting materials and, if the result can be secured in no other way, the exterior of the nest is elaborately draped with cobwebs.

All eggs appear beautiful to the seasoned oölogist, but few surpass in dainty elegance the three creamy ovals of the Pewee, with their spotting of quaint old browns and subdued lavenders. They are genuine antiques, and the connoisseur must pause to enjoy them even tho he honors the prior rights of Mr. and Mrs. _M. Richardsonii_.

No. 148. WESTERN FLYCATCHER.

A. O. U. No. 464. Empidonax difficilis Baird.

Synonym.—Western Yellow-bellied Flycatcher.

Description.—_Adults_: Above and on sides of breast olive or olive-green; a lighter shade of same color continued across breast; remaining underparts yellow (between sulphur and primrose), sordid on throat and sides, clearest on abdomen; bend of wing sulphur-yellow; a faint yellowish eye-ring; axillaries and lining of wings paler yellow; middle coverts and tips of greater coverts, continuous with edging of exposed secondaries, yellowish gray, forming two more or less conspicuous wing-bars. Bill brownish black above, yellow below; feet and legs brownish dusky; iris brown. _Young birds_ are browner above and paler below; wing-bars cinnamon-buffy, (and not certainly distinguishable in color from young of _E. traillii_). Length 5.50-6.00 (139.7-152.4); wing 2.64 (67); tail 2.24 (57); bill .47 (12); tarsus.67 (17).

Recognition Marks.—Warbler size; characterized by pervading yellowness;—really the easiest, because the most common of this difficult group; note a soft _piswit_; a woodland recluse. Adults always more yellow than _E. traillii_, from which it is not otherwise certainly distinguishable afield (save by note).

Nesting.—_Nest_: placed anywhere in forest or about shaded cliffs, chiefly at lower levels; usually well constructed of soft green moss, fine grasses, fir needles and hemp. _Eggs_: 3 or 4, dull creamy white, sparingly spotted and dotted or blotched with cinnamon and pinkish brown, chiefly about larger end. Av. size .66 × .52 (16.8 × 13.2). _Season_: May 1-July 1; one or two broods.

General Range.—Western North America from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, breeding north to Sitka and south chiefly in the mountains to northern Lower California and northern Mexico; south in winter into Mexico.

Range in Washington.—Common summer resident in timbered sections thruout the State.

Migrations.—_Spring_: Seattle-Tacoma, April 15. _Fall_: c. Sept. 1.

Authorities.—_Empidonax difficilis_, Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. IX. 1858, p. 193 “Catal. No. 5920.” L. D¹. Ra. Ss¹. Ss². B. E.

Specimens.—(U. of W.) P. Prov. B. BN. E.

Please observe the scientific name, _difficilis_, that is, difficult. There is a delicate irony about the use of this term as a distinctive appellation for _one_ of the “gnat kings,” for, surely, the plural, _Empidonaces difficiles_, would comprehend them all. There is something, indeed, to be learned from the notes of these little Flycatchers, and the first year the author studied them seriously he supposed he had a sure clew to their specific unraveling. But that was in the freshmen year of Empidonaxology. In coming up for “final exams.” he confesses to knowing somewhat less about them.

The bird, also, is well called Western; for however difficult the genus, we know at least that _difficilis_ (speaking seriously now) is the commonest species; that it appears under more varied conditions and enjoys a more general distribution than any other species of Empidonax in the West. The bird is, also, the first to arrive in the spring, returning to the latitude of Seattle about the middle of April, or when the yellow-green racemes of the Large-leafed Maple (_Acer macrophyllum_) are first shaken out to the breeze. The little fay keeps well up in the trees, occupying central positions rather than exposed outposts; and so perfectly do his colors blend in with the tender hues of the new foliage that we hear him twenty times to once we see him.

The notes are little explosive sibilants fenced in by initial and final “p” or “t” sounds. If one prints them they are not at all to be vocalized, but only whispered or hissed, _pssseet, pssseeit, psswit_, or _piswit_. Other variations are _sé a-wit_, slowly and listlessly; _cleotip_, briskly; _kushchtlip_, a fairy sneeze in Russian. One becomes familiar with these tiny cachinations, and announces the Western Flycatcher unseen with some degree of confidence. But the way is beset with dangers and surprises. Once, in June, at a point on Lake Chelan, after an hour’s discriminating study, I shot from practically the same stand, three birds which said _swit_, _piswit_, and _pisoo_ respectively, and picked up a Wright’s Flycatcher (_E. wrightii_), a Western Flycatcher (_E. difficilis_) and a Trail Flycatcher (_E. traillii_). The same woods contained Hammond’s Flycatcher (_E. hammondi_), while the Western Wood Pewee (_Myiochanes richardsonii_), which has the same general economy, was abundant also. _Difficilis? Etiam!_

The Western Flycatcher inhabits the deepest woods and occurs thruout the State wherever sufficient shade is offered. It is rather partial to well-watered valleys, and will follow these well up into the mountains, but does not occur on the mountain-sides proper at any considerable altitude. Nor does it appear to visit, save during migrations, those green oases in the dry country which are the delight of _E. traillii_. It mingles with _traillii_ in summer along the banks of streams and at the edges of swamps; with _hammondi_ in the more open woods and along the lower hillsides; with _wrightii_ along the margin of mountain lakes and streams; but in the forests proper it is easily dominant.

The Western Flycatcher is a catholic nester. It builds almost always a substantial cup of twigs, grasses, and hemp, lined with grass, hair or feathers. The outside is usually plentifully bedecked with moss, or else the whole structure is chiefly composed of this substance—not, however, unless the color-tone of the immediate surroundings will permit of it. In position it varies without limit. We find nests sunk like a Solitaire’s in a mossy bank, or set in a niche of a rocky cliff, on logs, stumps, or beams, in a clump of ferns, or securely lodged in a fir tree at a height of forty feet. One I found in a swamp was saddled on the stem of a slanting vine maple without a vestige of cover other than that afforded by the general gloom.

Eggs to the number of three or four, rarely five, are deposited late in May or early in June, and only one brood is raised in a season. The eggs are of a dull creamy white color, spotted and blotched rather lightly with cinnamon brown and pinkish buff, easily distinguishable from all others save those of the Traill Flycatcher.

These Flycatchers in nesting time are very confiding and very devoted parents. One may sometimes touch the sitting bird, and, when off, she flutters about very close to the intruder, sneezing violently and snipping her mandibles like fairy scissors.

No. 149. TRAILL’S FLYCATCHER.

A. O. U. No. 466. Empidonax traillii (Aud.)

Synonyms.—Little Flycatcher. Little Western Flycatcher.

Description.—Plumage of upperparts very similar to that of _E. difficilis_, but olive inclining to brownish; wing-bars usually paler, more whitish; outer web of outer rectrix pale grayish white; sides of head and neck decidedly browner; underparts everywhere paler, nearly white on throat; breast sordid, scarcely olivaceous; lower abdomen and crissum pale primrose yellow; bend of wing yellow flecked with dusky; a faint eye-ring pale olive-gray. Bill black above, light brownish below (not so light in life as _E. difficilis_). _Young_: much as in preceding species, but averaging browner; more yellow below than adult. Length 5.50-6.00 (139.7-152.4); wing 2.76 (70); tail 2.25 (57); bill .49 (12.5); tarsus .65 (16.5).

Recognition Marks.—Warbler size; olivaceous coloration; not so yellow below as preceding species; brush-haunting habits; note a smart _swit’choo_.

Nesting.—_Nest_: a rather bulky but neatly-turned cup of plant-fibres, bark-strips, grass, etc., carefully lined with fine grasses; placed three to ten feet up, in crotch of bush or sapling of lowland thicket or swamp. _Eggs_: 3 or 4, not certainly distinguishable from those of preceding species. Av. size, .70 × .54 (17.8 × 13.7). _Season_: June; one brood.

General Range.—Western North America, breeding north to southern Alaska (Dyea), “east, northerly, to western portion of Great Plains, much farther southerly, breeding in Iowa(?), Missouri, southern Illinois, and probably elsewhere in central Mississippi Valley”; south in winter over Mexico to Colombia, etc.

Range in Washington.—Imperfectly made out—summer resident in thickets at lower levels thruout(?) the State.

Authorities.—_Empidonax pusillus_ Cabanis, Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. IX. 1858, p. 195. Ibid, C&S. 170. (T). C&S. L¹. D¹. Ra. B. E.

Specimens.—(U. of W.) Prov. B. E.

Discrimination is the constant effort of those who would study the Empidonaces, the Little Flycatchers. Comparing colors, Traill’s gives an impression of brownness, where the Western is yellowish green, Hammond’s blackish, and Wright’s grayish dusky. These distinctions are not glaring, but they obtain roughly afield, in a group where every floating mote of difference is gladly welcomed. The Traill Flycatcher, moreover, is a lover of the half-open situations, bushy rather than timbered, of clearings, low thickets, and river banks. Unlike its congeners, it will follow a stream out upon a desert; and a spring, which gladdens a few hundred yards of willows and _cratægi_ in some nook of the bunch-grass hills, is sure to number among its summer boarders at least one pair of Traill Flycatchers. This partiality for water-courses does not, however, prevent its frequenting dry hillsides in western Washington and the borders of mountain meadows in the Cascades.

Traill’s Flycatcher is a tardy migrant, for it arrives not earlier than the 20th of May, and frequently not before June 1st. In 1899, the bird did not appear at Ahtanum, in Yakima County, until the 14th of June; and it became common immediately thereafter. This bird is restless, energetic, and pugnacious to a fault. It posts on conspicuous places, the topmost twig of a syringa bush, a willow, or an aspen, making frequent outcries, if the mood is on, and darting nimbly after passing insects. During the nesting season it pounces on passing birds of whatever size and drives them out of bounds. It is not always so hardy in the presence of man, and if pressed too closely will whisk out of sight for good and all.

The notes of the Little Flycatcher, as it used to be called, are various and not always distinctive. Particularly, there is one style which cannot be distinguished from the commonest note of the Hammond Flycatcher, _switchoo, sweéchew_, or unblushingly, _sweébew, sweébew, ssweet_. Other notes, delivered sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, are _pisoó_; _swit’oo, sweet, swit’oo_; _Swee, kutip, kutip_; _Hwit_ or _hooit_, softly.

Nesting begins late in June and fresh eggs may be expected about the 4th of July. Nests are placed characteristically in upright forks of willows, alder-berry bushes, roses, etc. They are usually compact and artistic structures of dried grasses, hemp (the inner bark of dead willows) and plant-down, lined with fine grasses, horse-hair, feathers and other soft substances. Not infrequently the nests are placed over water; and low elevations of, say, two or three feet from the ground appear to prevail westerly. A Yakima County nest, taken July 10th, containing two eggs, was half saddled upon, half sunk into the twigs of a horizontal willow branch one and a half feet above running water, and had to be reached by wading.

Incubation lasts twelve days, and the babies require as much more time to get a-wing. But by September 1st, tickets are bought, grips are packed—or, no! think of being able to travel without luggage—goodbyes are said; and it’s “Heighho! for Mexico!”

No. 150. HAMMOND’S FLYCATCHER.

A. O. U. No. 468. Empidonax hammondi (Xantus).

Synonym.—Dirty Little Flycatcher.

Description.—_Adult_: Above olive-gray inclining to ashy on foreparts,—color continued on sides, throat and breast well down, only slightly paler than back; remaining underparts yellowish in various degrees, or sometimes scarcely tinged with yellow[62]; pattern and color of wing much as in preceding species; outermost rectrix edged with whitish on outer web; bill comparatively small and narrow, black above, dusky or blackish below. _Young birds_ present a minimum of yellow below and their wing-markings are buffy instead of whitish. Length about 5.50 (139.7); wing 2.80 (71); tail 2.29 (58); bill .41 (10.5); breadth of bill at nostril .19 (4.83); tarsus .63 (16). Females average a little smaller.

Recognition Marks.—Warbler size, the smallest of the four Washington _Empidonaces_, and possibly the most difficult (where all are vexing); olive-gray of plumage gives impression of blackish at distance; the most sordid below of the Protean quartette; nests high in coniferous trees; eggs _white_.

Nesting.—_Nest_: of fir-twigs, grasses and moss, lined with fine grasses, vegetable down and hair; placed on horizontal limb of fir tree at considerable heights. _Eggs_: 4, pale creamy white, unmarked. Av. size, .65 × .51 (16.5 × 12.7). _Season_: June; one brood.

General Range.—Western North America north to southeastern Alaska, the valley of the Upper Yukon and Athabasca, breeding south, chiefly in the mountains, to Colorado and California; south in winter thru Mexico to the highlands of Guatemala.

Range in Washington.—Summer resident in coniferous timber on both sides of the Cascades, irregularly abundant and local in distribution.

Authorities.—[“Hammond’s fly-catcher,” Johnson, Rep. Gov. W. T. 1884 (1885), 22.] Bendire, Life Hist. N. A. Birds, Vol. II. 1895, p. 315ff. D¹. Ra. D². B. E(H).

Specimens.—C.

Hammondi is the western analogue of _minimus_, the well-known Least Flycatcher of the East. It has not, however, attained any such distinctness in the public mind, nor is it likely to except in favored localities. These chosen stations are quite as likely to be in the city as elsewhere; but no sooner do we begin to arrive at conclusions as to its habits, notes, etc., than the bird forsakes the region and our work is all to do over again at some distant time.

In the summer of 1895 I found Hammond Flycatchers fairly abundant on Capitol Hill (which was then in its pin-feather stage). Twenty or thirty might have been seen in the course of a morning’s walk in June. Everywhere were to be heard brisk _Sewick’s_ in the precise fashion of eastern _minimus_; and at rarer intervals a more intense but still harsh and unresonant _Sweé-chew_. These observations were confirmed by the taking of several specimens; but elsewhere and in other seasons I have found the bird most unaccountably silent, and have been able to add little to its repertory of speech.

In the summer of 1906 we found these Flycatchers preparing nests on Cannon Hill in Spokane. In both instances the birds were building out in the open after the fashion of the Western Wood Pewee (_Myiochanes richardsonii_); one on the bare limb of a horse-chestnut tree some ten feet from the ground; the other upon an exposed elbow of a picturesque horizontal limb of a pine tree at a height of some sixty feet. Near Newport, in Stevens County, we located a nearly completed nest of this species on the 20th of May, and returned on the 1st of June to complete accounts. The nest was placed seven feet from the trunk of a tall fir tree, and at a height of forty feet. The bird was sitting, and when frightened dived headlong into the nearest thicket, where she skulked silently during our entire stay. The nest proved to be a delicate creation of the finest vegetable materials, weathered leaves, fibers, grasses, etc., carefully inwrought, and a considerable quantity of the orange-colored bracts of young fir trees. The lining was of hair, fine grass, bracts, and a single feather. In position the nest might well have been that of a Wood Pewee; but, altho it was deeply cupped, it was much broader, and so relatively flatter. The four fresh eggs which it contained were of a delicate cream-color, changing to pure white upon blowing.

The Hammond Flycatcher was also found to be a common breeder in the valley of the Stehekin, where Mr. Bowles has taken several sets in very similar situations, viz., upon horizontal branches of fir trees at considerable heights.

No. 151. WRIGHT’S FLYCATCHER.

A. O. U. No. 469. Empidonax wrightii Baird.

Synonym.—Little Gray Flycatcher.

Description.—_Adult_ (_gray phase_): Above dull bluish gray or faintly olivaceous on back and sides; throat and breast pale gray to whitish with admixture of ill-concealed dusky; remaining parts, posteriorly, faintly tinged with pale primrose; a whitish eye-ring; wing-markings, of the same pattern as in other species, or more extensive on secondaries and outer webs of tertials, definitely white; outer web of outermost rectrix pale whitish. _Adult_ (_yellow-bellied phase_): As in gray phase, but underparts strongly tinged with yellow and upperparts faintly tinged with olive-green; wing-markings less purely white. Bill blackish above, more or less pale below and dusky tipped. _Young birds_ are whitish below and the wing-bands are buffy as in other species. Length about 5.75 (146); wing 2.69 (68); tail 2.40 (61); bill .47 (12); tarsus .71 (18).

Recognition Marks.—Warbler size; prevailing gray coloration; whitish eye-ring; excessively retiring habits.

Nesting.—_Nest_: of hemp, bark-strips, etc., softly lined; built in upright crotch of bush. _Eggs_: 4 or 5, white, unmarked. Av. size, .68 × .52 (17.3 × 13.2). _Season_: June; one brood.

General Range.—Western United States and southern British Columbia, breeding in Transition and Canadian life-zones, south to southern Arizona and east to Rocky Mountains; south in winter thru southern California and Mexico.

Authorities.—Dawson, Auk, Vol. XIV. Apr. 1897, p. 176.

Specimens.—Prov. C.

Bird-afraid-of-his-shadow is the name this shy recluse deserves. The few seen in Washington have always been skulking in the depths of brush patches, or in clumps of thorn bushes, and they seem to dread nothing so much as the human eye. For all they keep so close to cover they move about restlessly and are never still long enough to afford any satisfaction to the beholder.

The only note I have ever heard it utter (and this repeatedly by different individuals) was a soft liquid _swit_. But Major Bendire says of its occurrence at Fort Klamath in Oregon; “I do not consider this species as noisy as the Little Flycatcher [_E. traillii_] which was nearly as common, but its notes are very similar; in fact they are not easily distinguishable, but are given with less vigor than those of the former, while in its actions it is fully as energetic and sprightly as any of the species of the genus _Empidonax_.”

Wright’s Flycatcher affects higher altitudes than do the other species during the nesting season. The nest is placed at heights ranging from two to twenty feet, and is built in upright forks of bushes, or against the trunks of small saplings. Willows, alders, aspens, buck-brush, and service berry are common hosts. Perhaps the only nesting record for Washington consists of a set of four fresh eggs taken by myself from a draw on the side of Boulder Mountain overlooking the Stehekin Valley, on May 30, 1896. The nest had been deserted because of a brush fire which had swept the draw, but it was uninjured; and the situation, an alder fork eight feet up, together with the _white_ eggs, made identification certain.

_Trochilidæ_—The Hummingbirds

No. 152. BLACK-CHINNED HUMMINGBIRD.

A. O. U. No. 429. Trochilus alexandri Bourc. & Muls.

Synonyms.—Alexander Hummingbird. Sponge Hummer.