During the survey of the Mexican Boundary, specimens of this bird were obtained by Mr. J. H. Clark in El Paso, Texas, and in the month of May by Lieutenant Couch in Monterey, Mexico.
Mr. Dresser found that this bird was very common near Matamoras during the summer, and that they were breeding there. He also shot one specimen near San Antonio in May. Its stomach contained small insects. Dr. Coues thinks this Flycatcher an exceedingly abundant summer resident in the Territory of Arizona. It arrives there in spring about the first of May, the latest of the Flycatchers, and is deemed by the Doctor a counterpart of the eastern Contopus virens. It departs from that Territory about the third week in September. It is found in all situations, but most especially in open forests.
This species arrives in California, according to Dr. Cooper, at least a fortnight earlier than the date of its earliest advent in Arizona as given by Dr. Coues, or about the 15th of April, and spends its summers in the most mountainous parts of the State. It is said to perch mainly on the lower dead limbs, watching for the passing insects, uttering occasionally a plaintive pe-ah. It is usually very silent, and seems to prefer the dark, solitary recesses of the forests.
Dr. Hoy informs me that this Flycatcher is occasionally found in the neighborhood of Racine, but that it is rare. It keeps in the deep forest, and never comes near dwellings in the manner of C. virens.
This bird was found breeding at Fort Tejon by Mr. Xantus, at Napa Valley by Mr. A. J. Grayson, and both in the Sacramento Valley and at Parley’s Park, among the Wahsatch Mountains, by Mr. Ridgway.
A nest of this bird in the Smithsonian Museum (10,076) from California, collected by W. Vuille, had been apparently saddled on the limb of a tree, in the manner of C. virens, having a broad flattened base, and a general resemblance to the nests of that species. It differs, however, somewhat in regard to materials, and most especially in having no lichens attached to the exterior. It has a diameter of three inches and a height of one and a half. The cavity is about one inch deep and two wide at the rim. The base and sides of this nest are largely composed of the exuviæ of chrysalides, intermingled
with hemp-like fibres of plants, stems, and fine dry grasses. The rim is firmly wrought of strong wiry stems, and a large portion of the inner nest is of the same material. The whole is warmly and thoroughly lined with the soft fine hair of small quadrupeds and with vegetable fibres.
According to Mr. Ridgway, this is the most abundant and generally diffused of all the Tyrannuli of the Great Basin, as well as of California. It inhabits every grove of the lowest valleys, as well as the highest aspen copses on the mountains in the alpine region, and breeds abundantly in all these places. Resembling the eastern C. virens in its general habits, its appearance, and its every motion, it yet differs most widely from it in notes, the common one being a disagreeable weird squeak, very unlike the sad, wailing, but not unpleasant one of the eastern Wood Pewee. Mr. Ridgway relates that having shot a female bird, and taken her nest and eggs, he was surprised, a few days afterwards, to find the male with another mate, and a new nest built in precisely the same spot from which the other had been taken. Upon climbing to the nest, it was found to contain one egg; and the parents exhibited very unusual distress. When visited two or three days after, it was found to be deserted and the egg broken.
The eggs, three in number, measure .69 of an inch in length and .53 in breadth. They have a ground of beautiful cream-color slightly tinged with a roseate tint, surrounded at the larger end with a wreath of purple and reddish-brown spots. A few smaller markings are sparingly distributed, but nearly all are about the larger end.
Genus EMPIDONAX, Cabanis.