PEWEE name). Any of sev eral small nhve-green or brown American tyrant flycatchers (q.v.1. The common pewee or pixel:w hin] (Snyornis Plrbe) measures about 12 inches across the extended wings. It is brown on the hack, darker on the head, with a yellowish-white and belly, brown, slightly edged with a lighter color. Its principal habitat is the and Atlantiv States. ft comes north in April. and usually hatehes brood by the dle id '1,13• and another by the first of August. In October it returns to the south, migrating at night. It placed its nest originally on a ledge of rocks, or plastered it braeket-like against the surface of a mossy cliff. lint now more frequently chooses a beam or rafter of a building- or bridge. The nest is made of mud, grass, mosses, and the like, and is lined with down and other soft ma terials; but these materials seem so favorable for the breeding (f parasites that the second brood is often raised in a new nest. It lays from four to six eggs, white, rarely with a few reddish at the larger end. The hatching takes alunit thirteen and in a few days more the young birds leave the nest. The pewee occurs as far w(st as eastern Nebraska. Its food consists wholly of inserts. captured usually on the wing. Its plaintive note, pholu, is well known. Two allied species, Say's pewee (Sig/on/is Sayil and SaYornis nigricans, teem' in the Western States, The former is with cinnamon and blaek tail, while the latter is blackish, with a white belly.
The very familiar wood pewee I Con I opus yin ns) mea:ures from 10 to 11 inches across the outspread with the color of the lutlek much like that of the vhcehe-hird, but it two pale grayish hands across circlet around the eyes, a greenish yellow belly, and grayish throat and breast. Its flight is
rapid, with sudden sweeps when darting after its insect prey, which it pursues in the shade of the orchard or Its note is 11111(.11 slower and more plaintive than that of the phohe and is more frequently single-syllabled. It eowei north two or three weeks later than the pinebe, going as far north as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and retreating as far south in the winter as New Granada. The nest is saddled upon the branch of a tree and is notable for the skill with which it is covered with lichens, so that it very closely resembles a natural wart on the limb. The eggs are four or five, light yellowish, with reddish and lilac spots at the larger end. The pewee is very courageous, defending its nest agaill.t, all intruder:. Two broods are raised where the season is long enough. The Western wood pewee 1 Confopus llichardsoni), which re sembles the 'wood pewee' except in being darker and in having shorter legs, longer wings. and larger feet, is found from the sixtieth parallel of latitude to Panama and from the great plains to the Pacific.
The least pewee (Empidomix inininws) is a small bird, present in every village garden and roadside, and the type of a genus containing sev eral small similar sliecies. It makes a neat nest of hempen materials placed in the crotch of a small tree. Consult general works on American ornithology. See Plate of TYPICAL FLYCATCH ERS with the article FLYCATCHER: and Colored Plate of Enos or AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS.