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The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher with the kingbird, the phoebe and the wood pewee belongs to a family of birds peculiar to America — the family Tyrannidae or the family of tyrants. No better name could be applied to these birds when we take into consideration the enormous number of insects, of all descriptions, that they capture and devour and their method of doing it. They resemble the hawks in some respects. They are at home only where there are trees, on the outer branches of which they can perch and await a passing insect, and when one appears they "launch forth into the air; there is a sharp, suggestive click of the broad bill and, completing their aerial circle, they return to their perch and are again en garde."
In the tropics, the land of luxuriant vegetable growth, where the number and kinds of insects seem almost innumerable, the larger number of the three hundred and fifty known species are found. In the United States we are favored with the visits, during the warmer months, of but thirty-five species of these interesting and useful birds.
As we would naturally expect of birds of prey, whether hunters of insects or of higher animal life, these birds are not usually social, even with their own kind. They are also practically songless, a characteristic which seems perfectly fitted to the habits of the Flycatchers. Some of the species have sweet-voiced calls. This is the case with the wood pewee, of which Trowbridge has so beautifully written in the following verse:
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"Long-drawn and clear its closes were —
As if the hand of Music through
The sombre robe of Silence drew
A thread of golden gossamer;
So pure a flute the fairy blew.
Like beggared princes of the wood,
In silver rags the birches stood;
The hemlocks, lordly counselors,
Were dumb; the sturdy servitors,
In beechen jackets patched and gray,
Seemed waiting spellbound all the day
That low, entrancing note to hear
'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'" |
The Flycatchers are fitted both in the structure of their bills and in the colors of their plumage for the kind of life that they live. The bills are broad and flat, permitting an extensive gape. They live in trees and are usually plainly colored, either a grayish or greenish olive, being not so easily seen by the insects as if more brightly arrayed. This characteristic is known as deceptive coloration.
The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has its summer home in eastern North America, breeding from Massachusetts northward to Labrador. In the United States it frequents only the forests of the northern portion and the mountain regions. In the winter it passes southward into Mexico and Central America. Like all the Flycatchers of North America, the very nature of its food necessitates extensive migrations.
Its generic name is very suggestive. It is Empidonax, from two Greek words, meaning mosquito and a prince — Mosquito Prince!
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