The Birds' Calendar 



realize. In this view of the case the naturalist, 

 with each fresh discovery, brings out of the 

 storehouse of nature a treasure that is both new 

 and old. 



The spirit of gayety, so evidently animating 

 the great majority of our woodland birds, is as 

 strikingly and almost pathetically absent from 

 one of the families the flycatchers. The 

 longer one studies them, the more he is im- 

 pressed by their strange temperament. They 

 are not only very quiet, as compared with their 

 fellows, but their mood seems to be distinctively 

 a gloomy one, as if constantly living under the 

 shadow of sorrow. Whether this is so apparent 

 in the tropical species I do not know, but it is 

 a prevalent trait in the northern varieties. It 

 is a solitary, and for the most part silent, bird, 

 that seems to be out of touch with its surround- 

 ings, and yet not uninteresting to the observer, 

 for it is punctiliously neat in appearance, pict- 

 uresque in pose and motion, and its melancholy 

 doth become it well. 



One species, even more of a recluse than his 

 kindred, and the largest of this region, is the 

 great crested flycatcher, commonly seen high 



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