230 MUSCICAPID.E. 



these distinctions, — that the male jiossesses a song, which one 

 observer, Dovaston (Mag. Nat. Hist. v. p. 83), sa.ys is ex- 

 tremely like that of the Redstart, its notes being varied and 

 pleasing ; that the nest is almost invariably placed in the 

 hole of a decayed tree or of a building ; and that the birds 

 are exceedingly noisy and clamorous when their retreat is 

 approached. Mr. T. C. Heysham has furnished the informa- 

 tion that — 



"In the season of 1830, a pair had a nest in the iden- 

 tical hole where this species had bred for four successive 

 years. On the 14th of May this nest contained eight eggs, 

 arranged in the following manner : one lay at the bottom, 

 and the remainder were all regularly placed perpendicularly 

 round the sides of the nest, with the smaller ends resting 

 upon it, the effect of which Avas exceedingly beautiful." 



Its nest is a loose assemblage of roots and grass, with a 

 few dry leaves, sometimes of a large size, dead bents, and 

 hair : the eggs measure from '73 to -64 by from -55 to -5 in., 

 or exceptionally small ones only '52 by '43 in., and are of a 

 uniform pale greenish-blue colour, .with occasionally a few 

 fine specks of reddish-brown. The young are hatched about 

 the first or second week in June. Mr. Blackwall has recorded 

 (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. xv. p. 16V) an instance in which 

 the young of a pair, which had for a long series of years 

 occupied in safety a hole in his father's house, were stung to 

 death by a swarm of bees, whereupon in the following year 

 the birds still finding themselves molested by the bees re- 

 paired to a hole in a neighbouring wall. 



Pennant mentions an example of this bird killed near 

 Uxbridge in Middlesex ; and a good many have since been 

 observed in the same county, as well as in all those of the 

 south and east from Cornwall to Norfolk. In the midlands 

 it appears more rarely, but it has been noticed once or oftener 

 in Leicester, Derby, Stafford, Worcester and Hereford. 

 Further north its occurrence is less irregular, and in some 

 parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Durham and, as 

 above stated, certain localities in the Lake district, it has its 

 headquarters in England, though it also breeds yearly in a 



