(_Myiarchus crinitus_) Flycatcher family
_Called also_: CRESTED FLYCATCHER
(Illustration facing p. 106)
_Length_--8.50 to 9 inches. A little smaller than the robin.
_Male and Female_--Feathers of the head pointed and erect.
Upper parts dark grayish-olive, inclining to rusty brown on
wings and tail. Wing coverts crossed with two irregular bars
of yellowish white. Throat gray, shading into sulphur-yellow
underneath, that also extends under the wings. Inner vane of
several tail quills rusty red. Bristles at base of bill.
_Range_--From Mexico, Central America, and West Indies
northward to southern Canada and westward to the plains. Most
common in Mississippi basin; common also in eastern United
States, south of New England.
_Migrations_--May. September. Common summer resident.
The most dignified and handsomely dressed member of his family, the
crested flycatcher has, nevertheless, an air of pensive melancholy
about him when in repose that can be accounted for only by the pain he
must feel every time he hears himself screech. His harsh, shrill call,
louder and more disagreeable than the kingbird's, cannot but rasp his
ears as it does ours. And yet it is chiefly by this piercing note,
given with a rising inflection, that we know the bird is in our
neighborhood; for he is somewhat of a recluse, and we must often
follow the disagreeable noise to its source in the tree-tops before we
can catch a glimpse of the screecher. Perched on a high lookout, he
appears morose and sluggish, in spite of his aristocratic-looking
crest, trim figure, and feathers that must seem rather gay to one of
his dusky tribe. A low soliloquy, apparently born of discontent, can
be overheard from the foot of his tree. But another second, and he has
dashed off in hot pursuit of an insect flying beyond our sight, and
with extremely quick, dexterous evolutions in midair, he finishes the
hunt with a sharp click of his bill as it closes over the unhappy
victim, and then he returns to his perch. On the wing he is
exceedingly active and joyous; in the tree he appears just the
reverse. That he is a domineering fellow, quite as much of a tyrant as
the notorious kingbird, that bears the greater burden of opprobrium,
is shown in the fierce way he promptly dashes at a feathered stranger
that may have alighted too near his perch, and pursues it beyond the
bounds of justice, all the while screaming his rasping cry into the
intruder's ears, that must pierce as deep as the thrusts from his
relentless beak. He has even been known to drive off woodpeckers and
bluebirds from the hollows in the trees that he, like them, chooses
for a nest, and appropriate the results of their labor for his
scarcely less belligerent mate. With a slight but important and
indispensable addition, the stolen nest is ready to receive her four
cream-colored eggs, that look as if a pen dipped in purple ink had
been scratched over them.
The fact that gives the great-crested flycatcher a unique interest
among all North American birds is that it invariably lines its nest
with snake-skins if one can be had. Science would scarcely be worth
the studying if it did not set our imaginations to work delving for
plausible reasons for Nature's strange doings. Most of us will
doubtless agree with Wilson (who made a special study of these
interesting nests and never found a single one without cast
snake-skins in it, even in districts where snakes were so rare they
were supposed not to exist at all), that the lining was chosen to
terrorize all intruders. The scientific mind that is unwilling to
dismiss any detail of Nature's work as merely arbitrary and haphazard,
is greatly exercised over the reason for the existence of crests on
birds. But, surely, may not the sight of snake-skins that first greet
the eyes of the fledgling flycatchers as they emerge from the shell be
a good and sufficient reason why the feathers on their little heads
should stand on end? "In the absence of a snake-skin, I have found an
onion skin and shad scales in the nest," says John Burroughs, who
calls this bird "the wild Irishman of the flycatchers."
[Illustration: BOBOLINK (Upper Figure, Male; Lower Figure, Female)]
[Illustration: THE PH[OE]BE]