Female -- Smaller, with brighter yellow under parts and more
decidedly yellow wing-bars.
Range -- North America, from Labrador to Panama, and westward
from the Atlantic to the plains. Winters in Central America.
Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident. More commonly a
migrant only.
This is the most yellow of the small flycatchers and the only Eastern species
with a yellow instead of a white throat. Without hearing its call-note,
"pse-ek-pse-ek," which it abruptly sneezes rather than utters, it is quite
impossible, as it darts among the trees, to tell it from the Acadian
flycatcher, with which even Audubon confounded it. Both these little birds
choose the same sort of retreats -- well-timbered woods near a stream that
attracts myriads of insects to its spongy shores -- and both are rather shy
and solitary. The yellow-bellied species has a far more northerly range,
however, than its Southern relative or even the small green-crested
flycatcher. It is rare in the Middle States, not common even in New England,
except in the migrations, but from the Canada border northward its soft,
plaintive whistle, which is its love-song, may be heard in every forest where
it nests. All the flycatchers seem to make a noise with so much struggle, such
convulsive jerkings of head and tail, and flutterings of the wings that,
considering the scanty success of their musical attempts, it is surprising
they try to lift their voices at all when the effort almost literally lifts
them off their feet.
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