241 

 THE FLYCATCHER. ( '^^■'W 



BY 0. S. ROUND, KSQ. ^<^4L 



H.^ 



I CAx date my acquaintance with this bird as long as memory serves 

 me, and a very agreeable memory it is; our biographies seem so mingled, 

 that, whether from the pleasure of these early associations, which invested 

 him, in my eyes, with a peculiar interest, or that I really have always 

 liked him, I cannot say, but certain it is, my pleasant ideas and a little 

 bird watching for flies are ever in the same train of thought. Having 

 premised so much, I hope I may be pardoned for entering somewhat into 

 detail. As Defoe says, ^'I was born in London, and like a drooping plant, 

 probably for want of fresh air, etc., was taken into the country for my health," 

 and as the region to which I was transported was perhaps one of the 

 most salubrious in merry England, to the west of Windsor Park, I very 

 soon picked up, and it is likely owe my present existence to the visit. 

 This I was too young to remember, but the consequence was that from 

 that time I was the inhabitant of the same locality, until circumstances 

 made it our home, and twenty years residence there produced and fostered 

 those tastes for the beauties of Nature, which have procured me innu' 

 merable hours of innocent enjoyment, and laid a foundation which I love to 

 build upon, and upon which, with every interval of rest from labour or 

 anxiety, I find a refuge constituted of pleasures ever new and inexhaustible, 

 for it is made up of the contemplation of those works "whose builder and 

 maker is God." 



It was a lovely May afternoon, warm and genial after a showery day, 

 that we posted* to, and arrived at our sylvan mansion; we had come from 

 the neighbourhood of St. Pancras, and only imagine the change from dust 

 and dirt, and din and darkness, to verdure and freshness, and perfume and 

 purity; it was a change indeed, and I remember careering down our lawn 

 with my little sister, and plucking white daises and yellow buttercups, and 

 thinking how delicious it was, everything looked so very very clean, every- 

 thing was so very very sweet, and pure, and fresh. It was an early season, 

 and the trees formed a perfect bower of shade. It was a moment I never 

 have forgotten, and never shall forget. Around our porch there clung a 

 splendid woodbine, in full leaf and bloom, and I was not long in discovering 

 that there were tenants in this bower, for ever and anon a little grey- 

 looking bird would emerge from or fly into it. I suppose I had the 

 natural love for the thing within me, for I remember the tumult of inter- 

 ested feeling which the discovery awakened, and before the summer was 

 over I was very well up indeed in the habits of these little birds — need 

 I say that they were Flycatchers? — the Muscicapa grisola of Linnaeus, 

 the Stciparola of our countryman Ray, the Beam Bird of English naturalists. 



VOL. VI. 2 I 



