Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Nuttallornis borealis.
Maine (Lake Umbagog).
1879.
May 24. Several males near the Lake House calling from the tops of stubs.
" 30. Fully as abundant as during former years. We heard them continually yesterday during our trip up Cambridge River to the Sluice. In Belknap's "List of the Birds of Central California", it is said that the hunters of that state, liken the ordinary note of this bird to the words "three deer". Upon repeating this to one of the guides yesterday he at once recognized the resemblance (which must indeed, strike evryone) and further extended the exclamation by suggesting the addition of the word "look" to represent the gluck which almost invariably precedes the utterance.
This fine Flycatcher is remarkable for its fondness for some particular perch usually the highest point in the neighborhood. In the woods bordering the Cambridge, this is most commonly the topmost pinnacle of some tall fir. Upon a dead tree-top behind the Lake House one of those birds sits through the entire day. This morning I heard him utter a note that I do not remember to have heard before; it was a querulous, whirring sound very like that produced by Empidonax acadicus. This note is apparently most frequently used by the Olive-sided Flycatcher when two males are fighting, or when a male and female meet_it_is_difficult_to-say-which_as_the-opposite sexes even when mated are continually quarrelling.
Contopus borealis.
Maine (Lake Umbagog).
1879.
(June 23) Set B-1. Incubated about three days. The female was sitting and probably would have laid no more eggs. Horizontal branch of tall spruce on edge of woods--height fifty feet. I found this nest by watching the birds and saw the female go to it. The male drove away every bird that came near the tree, among others a Hairy Woodpecker which was fiercely assailed and ignominiously put to flight. The female was sitting to-day; she left the nest when my guide began to climb the tree and with her mate darted down about his head, both birds snapping their bills and keeping up a great outcry. [The ers in bar]