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. 
9 
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 tha his 
kindred, and the largest of this region, is the 
great crested flycatcher, commonly seen high 
180 
