274 FL YCA TCHER 



and for the same reason only a very few of the forms of Flycatchers 

 (which, after all the deductions above mentioned, may be reckoned 

 to include some 60 genera or subgenera, and perhaps 250 species) 

 c^in be even named. ^ 



The best known bird of this Family is that which also happens 

 to be the type of the Linnaean genus Miiscicapa — the Spotted or 

 Grey Flycatcher, M. grisola, already mentioned. It is a common 

 summer - visitant to nearly the whole of Europe, and is found 

 throughout Great Britain, though less abundant in Scotland than 

 in England, as well as in many parts of Ireland, where, however, 

 it seems to be but locally and sparingly distributed. It is one of 

 the latest of our migrants to arrive, and seldom reaches these islands 

 till the latter part of May, when it may be seen, a small dust- 

 coloured bird, sitting on the posts or railings of our gardens and 

 fields, ever and anon springing into the air, seizing -with an audible 

 snap of its bill some passing insect as it flies, and returning to the 

 spot it has quitted, or taking up some similar station to keep watch 

 as before. It has no song, but merely a plaintive or peevish call- 

 note, uttered from time to time with a jerking gesture of the wings. 

 It makes a neat nest, built among the small t^ags which sprout from 

 the bole of a large tree, or fixed in the branches of some plant 

 trained against a wall, or placed in any hole of the wall itself that 

 may be left by the falling of a brick or stone. The eggs are from 

 four to six in number, of a pale greenish-blue, closely blotched or 

 freckled with rust-colour. Silent and inconspicuous as is this bird, 

 its constant pursuit of flies in the closest vicinity of our houses 

 makes it a familiar object to almost everj'-body. A second British 

 species is the Pied Flycatcher, M. atricapilla, — called by some 

 writers the Goldfinch — a much rarer bird, and in England not often 

 seen except in the hilly country extending from the Peak of Derby- 

 shire to Cumberland, and more numerous in the Lake district than 

 elsewhere. It is not common in Scotland, and has only once been 

 observed in Ireland. ]\Iore of a woodland bird than the former, 

 the brightly - contrasted black and white plumage of the cock, 

 together with his agreeable song, readily attracts attention where 

 it occurs. It is a summer visitant to all Western Europe, but 

 further eastward its place is taken by a nearly allied species, 

 M. collaris, in which the white of the throat and breast extends 



' Of tlie 30 genera or subgenera which Swainson included in his Natural 

 Arrangc7)ient and Relations of the Family of Flycatchers (published in 183S), at 

 least 19 do not belong to the Muscicapidse at all, and one of them, Todus, 

 not even to the Order Passeres. It is perhaps impossible to name any ornitho- 

 logical work whose substance so fully belies its title as does this treatise, Swain- 

 son wrote it filled with faith in the so-called " Quinary System " (see Introduc- 

 tion), and, unconsciously swayed by that bias, his judgment was warped to fit 

 his hypothesis. 



