68 BIRDS BROWN ABOVE AND WHITE BELOW. 



no song properly so called, and a rarely used call- 

 note sounding like ' E-gypt-gypt ! ' there is little by 

 which to identify this plain bird of plain ways. 

 He is, nevertheless, a flycatcher in a ver}^ special 

 sense. Perching upon a railing or low, dead branch, 

 generally beside some open wa^'^, he darts from time 

 to time into the air, and capturing a fly on wing, 

 sometimes with an audible snap of his bill, at 

 once returns to his perch to wait almost motionless 

 until another one appears, when this performance 

 is again gone through. Sometimes he has to double 

 and turn upon a more than usually active fly, or 

 when flies are numei'ous on the ground he settles 

 among them, and his twistings and turnings as he 

 flutters a foot or two above the earth in pursuit of 

 them exhibit the Flycatcher as something of a 

 winged acrobat. He is, however, generally an 

 inactive bird of narrow ways, with two or three 

 perching-places wliere he waits for his insect-food 

 to come to him, and having swooped at and captured 

 it, returns to his perch to wait for more. The 

 nest is often placed in a fork of ivy growing 

 against wall or tree, and the bird is never far from 

 it. Many birds will captui^e flies in a similar 

 way, but it requires little observation of the Fly- 

 catcher to learn that he seldom takes a fiy in any 

 other way. 



HOUSE-SPARROW.— Length, 6 inches. Crown, 

 nape, and lower back ash-gray ; upper parts brown 

 streaked with black ; tail and wings brown, latter 

 with one white cross-bar ; throat black ; sides of 



