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The Vermilion Flycatcher at Santa Barbara

Authors
Bradford Torrey
Journal
Condor
Volume
9
Issue
4 (July-August)
Year
1907
Pages
109
Section
From Field and Study
Online Text

The Vermilion Flycatcher at Santa Barbara

On the 15th of March, 1907, on the Modoc Road west of Santa Barbara, I came upon a Vermilion Flycatcher. It was catching insects after its manner, perching between whiles upon the fence posts or the wire, and now and then betaking itself for a little to the top of a neighboring oak. It seemed but yesterday, tho it was four years ago, that I had seen my first bird of this kind (the first of many) doing the same thing, with the same phoebe-like flirt of its tail, from a wire fence at Tucson, Arizona. Here, as there, the bird was very “observable”, and I stayed with it for fifteen minutes or more, admiring its brilliant color, and in my enthusiasm pointing it out to a passing school boy, to whom I lent my twelve-power field-glass for an observation. “Yes,” he said, when I inquired if he had “got it”; “Yes, it is red and everything.”

This, I understand from the Editor of THE CONDOR, is at least one of the northernmost records for the species in California.

BRADFORD TORREY

Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts

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