AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



To observe the utmost devotion of mated birds to one 

 another one should look among the plain- 

 Lovely in hued and songless ones: thus the humble, 

 their Lives unadorned flycatcher is as fussy as a cock 

 partridge over his hen ; never far away, and 

 for ever popping titbits of food into her bill. When he 

 is proud of some feat of fly-catching as when he has 

 taken a butterfly on the wing he will land near the 

 nest whereon his mate sits, and give a peculiar call 

 " Zit-zit! " She seems to know it means that he has 

 something really good to offer, comes off the nest, and 

 for five or ten minutes suffers herself to be fed, as 

 though she were a helpless nestling. 



IT is woe to almost any insect that drifts across the 

 croquet lawn which a spotted flycatcher 

 The has made the headquarters of his summer 



Croquet fly-fishing. The hoops serve him admirably 

 Lawn Bird as watch-towers, and as he continuously 

 makes his circular tours of the ground the 

 sharp click of his beak, closing on his prey, brings a 

 sense of the sternness of life to the quiet pleasure-lawn. 

 His way is to make a goodly collection of flies before he 

 hies to the nest to pass them to his young. He does not 

 hesitate to bring them bees, and he ranks with swallows 

 and nightjars as an expert butterfly hunter, a sport at 

 which sparrows and others are sorry bunglers. The 

 birds have a marked attachment for pleasure- lawns. 

 They are now building second nests, or sitting on 

 second clutches. The flycatchers are usually the last of 

 our summer bird visitors to arrive; they at once set 

 about nesting, with none of the usual delay observed by 

 other migrants, and it seems that they are kept so busy 



