81 



THE SPOTTED FLYCATCHEE. 



Muscicapa grisola L. 



The first thing- to be noticed in this species is the very 

 early date of the first records, April 16th to 26th, when 

 this bird occurred in such widely separated localities as 

 Suffolk, Shropshire, Nottingham, Mid- Wales and the Isle 

 of Man. These were probably birds which had been 

 carried forward in the stream of other migrants. Up till 

 May 9th there were no records east of 1° west longitude, 

 with the exception of the early Suffolk bird; and so, 

 though the records are very few and scattered west of 

 this line, it seems fair to assume that somewhere about 

 May 3rd there was a small immigration of this species, 

 which spread up the counties near the Welsh border, 

 reaching Lancashire on the 4th and 6th. On May 9th 

 and 10th the birds seem to have been arriving in small 

 numbers along the south coast from Devon to Kent, but 

 the records are so few that it is impossible to indicate any 

 particular place as a point of arrival. 



After May 12th there were no further records from the 

 south, west of east Somerset, and the species was still 

 absent from the east, north of Essex ; but after the 16th 

 the records in Hampshire, Sussex and Kent show a slight 

 increase, and from the 22nd to the 26th the later arrivals 

 seem to have spread up the east coast as far as Scarborough 

 (Yorkshire). 



It seems, therefore, that the first immigration took 

 place in the south-west during the first and second weeks 

 in May, and the second in the south-east about May 16th, 

 and that the latter immigration furnished the breeding- 

 birds for the whole east side of the country. 



