in so low a tone as to be almost inaudible even a few yards away. Sometimes 

 the bird sings while fluttering in the air after insects, sometimes while sitting 

 on its perch ; it rather reminds one of the song of the Whinchat, and is 

 merely a few low rambling notes. The call-note is a monotonous ' zt-chick,' 

 uttered rapidly two or three times as the bird sits on its perch, every now and 

 then jerking its tail gracefully backwards and forwards. 



The Spotted Flycatcher does not remain very long in our Islands, and 

 usually departs for its winter-quarters before the middle of September. Although 

 it is able to fly rapidly, it seems very rarely to make use of its powers, as 

 its usual mode of progression is by short undulating flights from tree to 

 tree ; and once it has taken up its quarters for the summer it rarely strays 

 far from its favourite perch, and may nearly always be seen during the season 

 at some particular spot. 



The breed ing- haunts of the Spotted Flycatcher are woods, plantations, 

 orchards, gardens, and shrubberies, where there is a good supply of insect 

 food. Nest-building is seldom begun before the latter half of May, often not 

 till June. The site chosen for the nest is very varied, sometimes it is among 

 the creepers on the walls of a house, sometimes in crevices in the rough bark 

 of large trees, in a fork in some fruit tree, even in a hole in a broken-down 

 wall. In fact any small cavity suits the bird well enough, provided that the 

 nest is well supported all round, as it is a somewhat loosely built structure, 

 composed of dry grass, moss, cobwebs, lichens, and sometimes a few feathers, 

 lined with a profusion of hair, rootlets, and sometimes a feather or two. Some- 

 times a nest is built of root fibres and sticks, and copiously lined with wool. 

 The same situation is often tenanted year after year, presumably by the same 

 pair of birds ; but if subjected to repeated disturbance they will sometimes 

 quit the spot for a season or two, returning again to it afterwards. 



The eggs laid vary in number from four to six ; they are bluish white in 

 ground-colour, ranging to greenish blue, spotted, blotched, and clouded with 

 reddish brown of various shades. Some eggs have the markings in a zone 

 round the larger end, others are so profusely spotted that the ground-colour 

 is almost hidden, while some have a few large blotches of colour on the 

 large end of the egg, the rest of the surface being sparsely speckled with 

 small spots of colour. One very beautiful variety is clouded with a faint 

 pinkish bloom, which, however, soon fades after they are blown. They vary 

 in length from 79 to 7 inch, and from '61 to '53 inch in breadth. One 

 brood only is reared in the year as a rule, though occasionally the birds 

 succeed in hatching out a second. 



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