The Birds' Calendar 



realize. In this view of the case the naturalist, 

 with each fresh discovery, brings out of the 

 storehouse of nature a treasure that is both new 

 and old. 



The spirit of gay&ty, so evidently animating 

 the great majority of our woodland birds, is as 

 strikingly and almost pathetically absent from 

 one of the families — the flycatchers. The 

 longer one studies them, the more he is im- 

 pressed by their strange temperament. They 

 are not only very quiet, as compared with their 

 fellows, but their mood seems to be distinctively 

 a gloomy one, as if constantly living under the 

 shadow of sorrow. Whether this is so apparent 

 in the tropical species I do not know, but it is 

 a prevalent trait in the northern varieties. It 

 is a solitary, and for the most part silent, bird, 

 that seems to be out of touch with its surround- 

 ings, and yet not uninteresting to the observer, 

 for it is punctiliously neat in appearance, pict- 

 uresque in pose and motion, and its melancholy 

 doth become it well. 



One species, even more of a recluse than his 

 kindred, and the largest of this region, is the 

 great crested flycatcher, commonly seen high 



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