Fig. 43.—Spotted Flycatcher. ¼ natural size.
His call-note is a feeble chirp, two or three times repeated; and he is said to have a song, which few have heard, composed of a few rambling notes in a low tone.
The flycatcher begins to build soon after its arrival, and a favourite site for the nest is in the ivy growing against a wall; nests are also made in holes in walls and in the trunks of trees, on horizontal branches, and in a variety of situations. The nest is composed of dry grass and moss, mixed with a few feathers, and lined with rootlets and horsehair. Five or six eggs are laid; they are bluish white or pale green in ground-colour, clouded, blotched and spotted with reddish brown.
Flycatchers return to the same nesting-place year after year. One brood only is reared, and the birds leave us by the third week in September.
Pied Flycatcher.
Muscicapa atricapilla.
Upper parts and tail black; wings black, with the central coverts white; scapulars edged with white; under parts white. Female: greyish brown instead of black; the white dingy; the three lateral tail-feathers edged with white. Length, five inches.
The pied flycatcher is comparatively a rare bird, and is unknown to a great majority of the inhabitants of this country, being restricted to a few localities in the north of England and the south of Scotland, and to some parts of North Wales, and the English counties bordering on Wales. In its nesting and feeding habits, and its partiality for orchards and gardens, it is like the spotted flycatcher; but it arrives earlier than that species, usually during the last week in April or the first week in May. Its black-and-white plumage gives it a very different and a much more attractive appearance. The only other point in which the two species differ greatly is in the number and colour of the eggs. Those of the pied flycatcher number from five to eight, and are very beautiful, being of a uniform delicate pale blue, and unspotted.
A third species, the red-breasted flycatcher (Musicapa parva), has been included in the list of stragglers from Central and Eastern Europe to this country.