88 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
menced their work at twenty-five minutes to four— 
z.c., before sunrise—in the morning, and did not 
cease from their labours until ten minutes before nine 
—or after sunset—in the evening. During the inter- 
vening period they fed their young no less than five 
hundred and thirty-seven times, so that these two 
birds, supposing them to have brought a single victim 
The Spotted Flycatcher. 
only at each visit, and to have swallowed no more 
than one hundred additional captives themselves, 
must have killed between four and five thousand 
insects in the course of every week. 
Unless needlessly molested, the spotted flycatcher 
cares little for the vicinity of man, and will hawk 
away busily for flies within a few feet of the observer. 
As a general rule, it attaches itself to one particular 
