(_Empidonax virescens_) Flycatcher family
_Called also_: SMALL GREEN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER; SMALL PEWEE
_Length_--5.75 to 6 inches. A trifle smaller than the English
sparrow.
_Male_--Dull olive above. Two conspicuous yellowish wing-bars.
Throat white, shading into pale yellow on breast. Light gray
or white underneath. Upper part of bill black; lower mandible
flesh-color. White eye-ring.
_Female_--Greener above and more yellow below.
_Range_--From Canada to Mexico, Central America, and West
Indies. Most common in south temperate latitudes. Winters in
southerly limit of range.
_Migrations_--April. September. Summer resident.
When all our northern landscape takes on the exquisite, soft green,
gray, and yellow tints of early spring, this little flycatcher, in
perfect color-harmony with the woods it darts among, comes out of the
south. It might be a leaf that is being blown about, touched by the
sunshine filtering through the trees, and partly shaded by the young
foliage casting its first shadows.
Woodlands, through which small streams meander lazily, inviting swarms
of insects to their boggy shores, make ideal hunting grounds for the
Acadian flycatcher. It chooses a low rather than a high, conspicuous
perch, that other members of its family invariably select; and from
such a lookout it may be seen launching into the air after the passing
gnat--darting downward, then suddenly mounting upward in its aA"rial
hunt, the vigorous clicks of the beak as it closes over its tiny
victims testifying to the bird's unerring aim and its hearty appetite.
While perching, a constant tail-twitching is kept up; and a faint,
fretful "_Tshee-kee, tshee-kee_" escapes the bird when inactively
waiting for a dinner to heave in sight.
In the Middle Atlantic States its peeping sound and the clicking of
its parti-colored bill are infrequently heard in the village streets
in the autumn, when the shy and solitary birds are enticed from the
deep woods by a prospect of a more plentiful diet of insects,
attracted by the fruit in orchards and gardens.
Never far from the ground, on two or more parallel branches, the
shallow, unsubstantial nest is laid. Some one has cleverly described
it as "a tuft of hay caught by the limb from a load driven under it,"
but this description omits all mention of the quantities of blossoms
that must be gathered to line the cradle for the tiny, cream white
eggs spotted with brown.