SPOTTED FLYCATCHER. 165 



White of Selborne remarks, even more than once, in his 

 miscellaneous observations published in the second volume of 

 Mr. Jesse''s Gleanings, that the Spotted Flycatcher arrives 

 on the 20th of May. Mr. Selby says, this bird seldom 

 makes its appearance till the oak-leaf is partly expanded, and 

 it begins to form a nest immediately on its arrival. It fre- 

 quents wchards, gardens, lawns and pleasure-grounds, and 

 is not a little remarkable for the singularity of the places in 

 which it sometimes makes its nest. It is also believed that 

 the same pair of birds return to occupy the same spot for 

 several years in succession. 



In the first volume of the Magazine of Natural History, 

 a notice appears of a pair of Flycatchers that formed their 

 nest on the head of a garden-rake left by accident near a 

 cottage. Mr. Blackwall has mentioned an instance of a pair 

 that built their nest in a bird-cage, which had been left with 

 the door open suspended from the branch of a tree in a gar- 

 den. Mr. Atkinson, in his Compendium of Ornithology, 

 says, we recollect a pair having built on the angle of a lamp- 

 post in one of the streets of Leeds, and there rearing their 

 young. Mr. Jesse, in the second part of his Gleanings, men- 

 tions a nest of this Flycatcher, M'hich was found on the top 

 of a lamp near Portland-place in London, having five eggs in 

 it, which had been sat upon. This nest, fixed in the orna- 

 mental crown on the top of the lamp, as described, I saw at 

 the Office of Woods and Forests, in Whitehall-place. 



The more usual places for this bird's nest are, the side of 

 a faggot-stack, a hole in a wall, or on a beam in an out-build- 

 ing, whence arises one of its provincial names, that of Beam- 

 bird ; it also frequently fixes its nest on a branch of a pear- 

 tree, a vine, or a honeysuckle, when trained against a build- 

 ing. Of three cup-shaped nests now before me, one is formed 

 on the outside of old dark-coloured moss, mixed with roots, 

 the lining of grass stems, with only two or three white fea- 



