MUSCICAPIDiE. 



157 



THE SPOTTED FLYCATCHER. 



MUSCICAPA GRI'SOLA, LinilKUS. 



The Spotted Flycatcher is often said to be one of the latest spring- 

 visitors to our islands ; nevertheless it has been observed exception- 

 ally in our eastern counties as early as April 23rd, and at Carlisle one 

 day earlier, while the usual date of its appearance in the south is 

 about the first week in May ; and even in the remarkably cold back- 

 ward spring of 1888, I watched an evidently new arrival feeding in 

 Kensington Gardens on the ist of that month. During the summer 

 this species is generally distributed throughout Great Britain, be- 

 coming rarer towards the north ; although even there it has been 

 found nesting in Sutherland, Caithness, and as far westward as Skye; 

 occasionally in the Orkneys, which it sometimes visits in autumn, 

 as well as the Shetlands. Mr. Ussher says that in Ireland it breeds 

 in every county, even in the remote west. 



The Spotted Flycatcher breeds as far north as Tromso in Norway 

 and Archangel in Russia ; while southward it is tolerably abundant 

 throughout Europe, nesting down to the northern shores of the 

 Mediterranean ; also on the African side, and in Asia Minor, Pales- 

 tine, Persia, Turkestan, and Siberia as far as Irkutsk. In winter it 

 visits India, Arabia, and Africa to Cape Colony. It leaves our 

 islands and the northern portion of Europe in September, but in the 

 south the abundance of insect food enables it to remain later ; and 

 in Asia Minor it has even been obtained late in November. 



