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The Vermilion Flycatcher at Santa Barbara

Bradford Torrey

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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.

Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts

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