Length: About 9 inches.
Male and Female: Olive-gray above; throat and breast light gray; belly, bright yellow; head conspicuously crested; bill, long, dark, slightly hooked, with bristles at its base; wings brown, margined with white, pale yellow, and reddish-brown; middle tail-feathers, dull brown; inner web of other tail-feathers reddish-brown.
Notes: A whistle that attracts attention. Major Bendire describes the “Great Crest’s” notes as follows:
“It utters a variety of sounds; the most common is a clear whistle like e-whuit-huit, or wit-whit, wit-whit, repeated five or six times in a somewhat lower key, and varied to whuir, whuree, or puree, accompanied by various turnings and twistings of the head. Its alarm-note is a penetrating and far-reaching wheek, wheek.”
Nest: The nest of the crested flycatcher is unique. Major Bendire says that it “is usually placed in a natural cavity of some tree or dead stump; possibly in an abandoned woodpecker excavation, though a natural one is preferred.” He says also that “nests vary in bulk; are begun with a base of coarse trash and finished with fine twigs, bunches of cattle hair, pine needles, dry leaves and grasses, the tail of a rabbit, pieces of catbirds’ eggshells, exuviÆ of snakes, owl and hawk feathers, tufts of woodchucks’ hair and fine grass roots.”
Snake-skins “seem to be present in the majority of the nests of this species; sometimes in the nest proper, and again placed around the sides of it, in all probability for protective purposes, and changed and rearranged from time to time” ... probably hung outside to “alarm intruders.”[128]
