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.