STATUS: Common.
HABITAT: Typically inhabits northern alder swamps, where it occupies a variety of habitats, including thickets of aspen parkland. Usually found near water in dense, low, damp thickets of alders, willows, sumacs, viburnum, elderberries, and red-osier dogwood bordering bogs, swamps, marshes, and along the banks of small streams and shores of ponds.
SPECIAL HABITAT REQUIREMENTS: Forest openings and edges with dense, low shrubs.
NEST: Nests in low trees or shrubs including dogwood, blackberry, hawthorn, viburnum, willow, spiraea, or alder, 1 to 6 feet above the ground, in an upright fork or saddled on a branch.
FOOD: Catches at least 65 species of beetles as well as other flying insects, spiders, and millipedes; eats some fruits.
REFERENCES: Bent 1942, DeGraff et al. 1980, Eckert in Farrand 1983b, Mousley 1931, Stein 1958, Terres 1980.