266 IKSECTIVOR^. 



THE PIED FLY-CATCHER (MusticapO, 



The history of this species is also a little confused. No 

 good cause has been shown, either by fact or analogy, to 

 establish the assertion, that the birds reside in any part of 

 England during the winter : and as they resemble the shrikes 

 more in character than the spotted fly-catcher does, which is 

 a summer migrant, the presumption is, that they are summer 

 migrants also. They follow nearly the same zone in longi- 

 tude as the shrikes ; but they are found farther to the north, 

 chiefly beyond the heights on the confines of Stafford and 

 Derby, where the principal locality of the shrikes terminates. 

 They are found thence along the hills between York and 

 Lancashire, and so into the hilly parts of Westmoreland and 

 Cumberland ; but there is no account of their breeding or 

 even being found in Scotland ; and they are very rare on 

 those champaign parts of England over which they must 

 pass in order to arrive at the interior and hilly districts. 

 But that, though an important fact in their history, and in 

 the history of migration generally, is no argument against 

 their arrival in the spring and their departure in the autumn. 

 The same instincts which adapt birds to certain districts, 

 guide them to those districts, without any reference to the 

 country which lies between. Like the occasional shrike, 

 these are upland birds, and they find their way to the up- 

 lands, just as the softer-billed summer migrants find their 

 way to the lower and richer places, where the larvae of lepi- 

 dopterous insects are more abundant. 



A figure of the pied fly-catcher, one third of the lineal 

 dimensions, is given on the plate at page 246, on the same 

 scale with the sand-martin and the swift, the three to- 

 gether showing the gradation of fly-catching birds, from the 

 swift, which dashes after them with great celerity, and at the 

 highest elevation to which little birds extend their hawking, 



