Chapter XII. 



FLYCATCHERS. 



If there is any family of birds which specially belongs 

 to the summer it must be acknowledged to be that family 

 which depends entirely on flies and other insects of the kind 

 for food. My earliest recollections of birds are largely filled 

 with a little brown-backed, breast-speckled thing, which loved 

 a stooping branch of an apple tree in the orchard, and year 

 by year built in a hole in the stable wall. Coming only when 

 the weather had really set in warm, somewhere about the 

 end of May, he was always to be found somewhere close by, 

 no swallow truer to the old home. It is with little less plea- 

 sure one finds his representative in China. 



Muscicapa griseola, the grey or common flycatcher, he 

 is usually called. There is no show about him. Built strictly 

 for "business", all frippery seems alien to his nature. He 

 loves the neighbourhood of trees, and it is usually in or near 

 their shade that his stand is taken. I have been watching 

 one recently. A little glade aft^ords him his most-loved hunting- 

 place, and when there he is the avian embodiment of alertness. 

 If generals could instil into scouts, vedettes, and sentries a 

 tithe of the watchfulness which he shows there could be no 

 such thing as surprise in war. Nothing escapes the watchful 

 eye of the flycatcher, and woe betide any unlucky fly that 

 buzzes into his immediate neighbourhood. A lightning glance 

 of the eye, an equally rapid turn of the body, if that be 

 necessary, a dart through the air, a snap of the mandibles 

 as if a small steel -trap had come to, and the few short hours 

 of the poor fly are ended. The grey flycatcher has one trait, 

 which he shares with the kingfisher, his tolerance of the pres- 

 ence of man when watching for his prey. Most birds have 

 a strong dislike to being watched. If you want to see what 

 they are doing, and they know you are there, you must pre- 

 tend to be occupied in watching something else at a distance, 

 and then you can attain the object of your desire, only out of 

 the corner of your eye. Then neither birds nor rabbits seem to 

 mind. But "We hate being stared at", might be as common 

 a saying in bird-language as it is amongst ourselves. To the 

 flycatcher, if there should happen to be a cold spell after he 

 has arrived, man is sometimes extremely useful, for by his 



