176 PASSERES. MUSCICAPAD^. 



seems to be very leisurely, for a montli after their 

 appearance with us, Mr. Hill writes, on the 28th 

 of April, " This morning the Grey Petchary made 

 his appearance on the lofty cocoa-nut, for the first 

 time this season. He is there now, shivering his 

 wings, on its flaunting limbs, unceasingly scream- 

 ing pi-chee-ree-e. He is turning about and pro- 

 claiming his arrival to every quarter of the wind. 

 He is Sir Oracle, and no dog must bark in his 

 neighbourhood." 



I have not observed in the vicinity of Blue- 

 fields, the predilection alluded to by my friend 

 of this bird for the Palm-tribe. Several pairs 

 have nested under my notice, but none of them 

 were in palm-trees. Of two which I procured 

 for examination, one was from an upper limb 

 of a bitterwood-tree, of no great height, close 

 to a friend's door. It was a cup made of the 

 stalks and tendrils of either a small passion-flower 

 or a bryony, the spiral tendrils prettily arranged 

 round the edge, and was very neatly and thickly 

 lined with black horse-hair. It contained tlu'ee 

 young, newly hatched, and thinly clothed with a 

 bufi'-coloured down, and one egg. The other was 

 from a hog-plum {Spondias). It was a rather 

 loose structure, smaller and less compact, com- 

 posed almost entirely of tendrils, which gave it 

 a crisped appearance ; a few stalks entered into 

 the frame, but there was no horse-hair within ; 

 but one or two of the shining black frond-ribs of 

 a fern, scarcely thicker than hair. The eggs, three 

 in number, were round-oval, 1 inch by |; dull 



