Colors. Entire upper parts olive-brown, with a rufous tinge on the head, and ashy on the scapulars and wing-coverts. Nares, circle around the eye and throat, pale rufous; the latter spotted with black. Breast, sides, and flanks, cinereous; middle of the abdomen white, with a tinge of fulvous; under tail-coverts bright fulvous. Quills and tail-feathers brown, the former edged exteriorly with ashy, the latter with olive. Bill and feet light. Sexes very nearly alike.
Hab. California and New Mexico. Spec. in Mus. Acad., Philada.
Obs. This bird resembles no other species of its genus, except Pipilo Aberti, Baird, (Stansbury’s Report of a Survey of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, Zoology, p. 325, 1852). From this it differs in the color of the throat, that of the latter being uniform with the other inferior parts of the body, and in other characters.
The figure in our plate represents the adult male about two-thirds of the natural size.
Plate 18
The Scarlet-crowned Flycatcher
Pyrocephalus rubineus (Boddaert)
PYROCEPHALUS RUBINEUS.—Boddaert.
The Scarlet-crowned Flycatcher.
PLATE XVIII.—Adult and Young Males.
This bright-plumaged little bird is a summer visitor to Texas and New Mexico, in which countries it rears its young, and appears to be an inhabitant also not only of Mexico, but of nearly the whole of Central and South America. It has been long known as a bird of the last-named division of this continent, though but recently ascertained to be a resident within the limits of the United States, having been first observed in Texas by Captain J. P. McCown, of the United States Army, in 1850, and announced as an addition to the ornithology of North America, by Mr. Lawrence, in the Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, V. p. 115. In some interesting notes on the birds of Texas, by Capt. McCown, published in the same journal, VI. p. 12, we find the following in reference to the present species:
“This beautiful little Flycatcher is seldom seen. I did not notice over a dozen of them while in Western Texas. I always found them near the ponds along the Rio Grande, and generally on a tree or stake near the water. The only nest I ever found was built upon a retama (a variety of acacia), over the water, and I was not able to procure it. The female is quite a plain bird.”
Our friend, Lieut. D. N. Couch, one of the several officers of the Army who have greatly contributed to the knowledge of the Natural History of little-explored portions of this country, and the results of whose observations have most generously been placed at our disposal, met with this bird in small numbers in Northern Mexico. From many valuable papers, which will add much to the interest of the present work, and for which we are indebted to this gentleman, we make the following extract: