INSESSORES.
E ENTIROSTRE S .
MUSCICAPIDjE.
TH E SPOTTED FLYCATCHER.
Muscicapa grisola, Spotted Flycatcher, P enn. Brit. Zool. vol. i. p. 471.
,, ,, ,, ,, M ontagu, Ornith. Diet.
,, ,, ,, ,, B ewick, Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 213.
,, ,, ,, ,, F l em. Brit. An. p. 63.
,, ,, ,, ,, Selby, Brit. Ornith. vol. i. p. 141.
,, ,, ,, ,, J enyns, Brit. Yert. p. 97.
,, „ ,, ,, Gould, Birds of Europe, pt. xviii.
,, ,, Gobe-mouche gris, T emm. Man. d’Ornith. vol. i. p. 152.
M uscicapa. Generic Characters.—Beak of moderate length, stout, angular
; broad and depressed at the base ; compressed towards the point, which is
slightly curved: the base surrounded with hairs directed forwards. Nostrils
basal, lateral, oval, partly concealed by hairs. Feet with the tarsus the same
length, or even longer than the middle to e : the lateral toes nearly equal in
length ; the outer toe connected to the middle one ; the claw of the hind toe
stronger and more curved than either of the others. Wings—the first feather
very short, the second not so long as the fourth, the third the longest.
T he Spotted F lycatcher is one of the latest, but, at
the same time, one of the most regular of our summer visitors.
White of Selborne remarks, even more than once, in his
miscellaneous observations published in the second volume of
Mr. Jesse’s Gleanings, that the Spotted Flycatcher arrives
on the 20th of May. Mr. Selby says, this bird seldom
makes its appearance till the oak-leaf is partly expanded, and
it begins to form a nest immediately on its arrival. It frequents
orchards, gardens, lawns and pleasure-grounds, and
is not a little remarkable for the singularity of the places in
which it sometimes makes, its nest. It is also believed that
the same pair of birds return to occupy the same spot for
several years in succession.
In the first volume of the Magazine of Natural History,
a notice appears of a pair of Flycatchers that formed their
nest on the head of a garden-rake left by accident near a
cottage. Mr. Blackwall has mentioned an instance of a pair
that built their nest in a bird-cage, which had been left with
the door open suspended from the branch of a tree in a garden.
Mr. Atkinson, in his Compendium of Ornithology,
says, we recollect a pair having built on the angle of a lamp-
post in one of the streets of Leeds, and there rearing their
young. Mr. J esse, in the second part of his Gleanings, mentions
a nest of this Flycatcher, which was found on the top
of a lamp near Portland-place in London, having five eggs in
it, which had been sat upon. This nest, fixed in the ornamental
crown on the top of the lamp, as described, I saw at
the Office of Woods and Forests, in Whitehall-place.
The more usual places for this bird’s nest are, the side of
a faggot-stack, a hole in a wall, or on a beam in an out-building,
whence arises one of its provincial names, that of Beam-
bird ; it also frequently fixes its nest on a branch of a pear-
tree, a vine, or a honeysuckle, when trained against a building.
Of three cup-shaped nests now before me, one is formed
on the outside of old dark-coloured moss, mixed with roots,
the lining of grass stems, with only two or three white fea