44 THE BIEDS OF OXFORDSHIKE. 



THE SPOTTED FLYCATCHER. 



Muscicapa grisola. 



The Spotted Flycatcher is a common summer visitor, and 

 a familiar garden bird. It usually arrives with us about the 

 first or second week in May, and commences nesting" operations 

 almost at once. On one occasion, in 1885, I have observed it 

 as early as the 38th April. From observations made in 

 a garden at Bodicote, where two or three pairs have nested 

 regularly for many years, I am satisfied that Flycatchers rear 

 always two, and in some rare cases even three, broods in a 

 season. They leave us by the middle of September. 



THE PIED FLYCATCHER. 



Muscicapa at)kapiUa. 

 The Pied Flycatcher is a passing visitor in spring on its 

 way to its breeding haunts, but is of rare occurrence. The 

 Messrs. Matthews record a male seen by one of them in 

 Middleton Park on the 23rd April, 1848, and a pair in their 

 collection shot near Oxford a few years before; also that it 

 had been observed by Mr. Roundell near Fringford [Zoologist, 

 p. 2532) ; and the Rev. A. Matthews was informed by Mr. 

 Forrest, an Oxford bird-stuffer, that a pair once built at 

 Headington near that city {in lit.). It was upon Mr. 

 Matthews' authority that Mr. A. G. More {Wis, 1865) in- 

 cluded Oxford among the counties in which the Pied Fly- 

 catcher nested occasionally {in lit.) ; and these records, as the 

 Editor kindly informs me, aj)pear to have been the foundation 

 for the statement in 'Yarrell'' (vol. i. p. 231) that the Pied 

 Flycatcher had been recorded as having occasionally bred in 

 Oxon. A Pied Flycatcher was seen darting from and re- 

 turning to the iron rail round a j)ond at Williamscote on the 

 28th April, 1884 [Field, 3rd May, 1884), and Mr. W. Warde 

 Fowler saw a pair in a field studded with small trees close to 

 the church at Kingham on the 24th April, 1886. In late 



