174 PASSERES. MUSCICAPAD^E. 



it by repeated blows, struck on the branch where 

 he devours it. I have remarked him, beside, 

 beating over little spaces of a field, like a Hawk, 

 and reconnoitring the flowers beneath him ; search- 

 ing also along the blossoms of a hedge-bank, and 

 striking so violently into the herbage for insects, 

 that he has been turned over as he grabbed his 

 prey, and seemed saved from breaking his neck 

 in his vehemence, only by the recoil of the her- 

 bage. 



" His nest in this part of the island has seldom 

 been found in any other trees than those of the 

 palm-kind. Amid the web of fibres that encircle 

 the footstalk of each branch of the cocoa-nut, he 

 weaves a nest, lined with cotton, wool, and grass. 

 The eggs are four or five, of an ivory colour, 

 blotched with deep purple spots, intermingled with 

 brown specks, with the clusters thickening at the 

 greater end. The Eagle, flapping his pinions as 

 he shrieks from his rock when the tempest-cloud 

 passes by, is not a more striking picture than 

 this little bird, when, with his anxieties all cen- 

 tred in the cradle of his young ones, he stands 

 in 'his pride of place,' on the limb of his palm, 

 towering high above all other trees, and battling 

 with the breeze that rocks it, and, rush after rush 

 as the wind sweeps onward, flutters his wings with 

 every jerk of the branches, and screams like a 

 fury." 



I have little to add to the above detail. With 

 us at the western end of the Island, the Grey 

 Petchary is wholly migratory, not one having been 



