22 FRIENDS OF THE AGRICULTURIST 



The Dusky Flycatcher (Alseonax adusta) is an ashy- 

 brown little bird with a white eyebrow, and is common 

 in the wooded belts of the South-Eastern portion of 

 South Africa. 



It builds a neat little cup-shaped nest covered on the 

 outside with lichen, generally situated in a cavity or ledge 

 on the face of a rocky krantz overshadowed by trees ; 

 sometimes in a hollow in the bark of a tree trunk. In 

 the neighbourhood of Grahamstown this bird has taken 

 to building in the fork of a pine-tree or on the top of a 

 bundle of debris (pine-needles, &c.) between the branches. 

 It lays three or four eggs of a greenish colour freckled 

 with brown and red-brown, during the months of Sep- 

 tember to December. On one occasion when encamped 

 with Dr. Stark in a kloof, a little Dusky Flycatcher was 

 seated on its nest in a tiny niche in the face of a rock 

 a foot or so from the doctor's head, and although it was 

 the first nest of this species he had seen, needless to say 

 the confiding little bird was left in peace. 



The Cape Flycatcher (Pachyprora capensis) has the 

 top of the head blue-grey, back olive-brown, tail-feathers 

 black tipped with white ; below white with a broad black 

 band across the chest, and the sides of the body orange- 

 rufous. The female has no black band on the chest, the 

 whole of the under parts being a dark orange chestnut. 



The bird is a lover of thickly wooded country and is 

 particularly fond of the kloofs, where it builds a shallow 

 cup-shaped nest of grass and other material, lined in- 

 ternally with fibre and hair and covered externally with 

 lichen. The eggs are pale greenish-white spotted with 

 pale brown and marked with a ring of purplish-brown 

 blotches on the obtuse end. 



The White-flanked Flycatcher (P. molitor), both male 



