RED-BREASTED FLYCATCHER. 339 
Flycatcher. We soon heard a song which was new to me, but we followed 
it a long time before we could see the bird. It was a very unobtrusive 
song, intermediate between the notes of the Robin and the Redstart. For 
some time the bird kept at the top of the beeches. It was as restless as a 
Redstart ; and we followed it in vain, until, just as the sun was setting, h 
came down upon the lower branches and sang his simple song within 
twenty feet of us. We might have mistaken him for a Robin with his 
red breast, but every now and then he half spread his tail and showed the 
white on it. A few days later (on the 11th of June) Dr. Holland and I 
went toa forest beyond Schlave to take the nest of a Honey-Buzzard. 
In the forest we several times heard the alarm-note of the Red-breasted 
Flycatcher, a pink, pink, pink, something like the spink of a Chaffinch, but 
softer, clearer, and quicker. Our guide showed us presently a nest, scarcely 
six feet from the ground, in a hollow in the trunk of a beech tree. We 
caught the bird on the nest. He also showed us a second nest which he 
had taken a few days before, likewise composed principally of green moss ; 
but it had been built close against the stem of a beech, supported by a 
bunch of small twigs, which made a convenient shelf for it. In its habits 
this charming little bird reminds one both of a Flycatcher and a Tit. It 
catches insects on the wing with ease, and flutters before the trunk of a 
tree to pick an insect off the bark. 
The nest of the Red-breasted Flycatcher is a very handsome little 
structure, almost entirely formed of green moss, with here and there a few 
scraps of lichen and a downy feather or two. The inside is sparingly lined 
with fine dry grass and hairs. The nest-cavity measures about two inches 
in diameter and one and a half inch in depth. Many of the eggs of 
this bird very closely resemble Robin’s eggs in colour, others as closely 
the eggs of the Spotted Flycatcher. They are the palest of bluish 
green in ground-colour, closely freckled with reddish-brown and greyish- 
brown shell-markings. Some eggs are much greener in general 
coloration, and the amount of spotting also differs considerably. <A 
clutch of five in my collection are an almost uniform pinkish brown, with 
scarcely a trace of the ground-colour discernible, and somewhat resemble 
certain varieties of the Blackcap’s eggs. Some specimens have most of 
the markings confined to a zone round the larger end. The eggs are 
from five to seven in number, and vary from ‘07 to ‘06 inch in length, and 
from °54 to ‘5 inch in breadth. 
The Red-breasted Flycatcher has the general colour of the upper parts, 
except the crown, nape, and sides of the head and neck, which are bluish 
grey, olive-brown; central tail-feathers blackish brown, the outer ones 
white at base and broadly tipped with blackish brown; throat and breast 
orange-chestnut ; rest of underparts white, suffused on the flanks and under 
tail-coverts with buff. Beak brown, paler at the base; irides hazel; legs, 
