MUSCICAPIDE. 157 
THE SPOTTED FLYCATCHER. 
Muscicapa GRisota, Linnzeus. 
The Spotted Flycatcher is often said to be one of the latest spring- 
visitors to our islands ; nevertheless it has been observed exception- 
ally in our eastern counties as early as April 23rd, and at Carlisle one 
day earlier, while the usual date of its appearance in the south is 
about the first week in May ; and even in the remarkably cold hack- 
ward spring of 1888, I watched an evidently new arrival feeding in 
Kensington Gardens on the 1st of that month. During the summer 
this species is generally distributed throughout Great Britain, be- 
coming rarer towards the north; although even there it has been 
found nesting in Sutherland, Caithness, and as far westward as Skye; 
occasionally in the Orkneys, which it sometimes visits in autumn, 
as well as the Shetlands. Mr. Ussher says that in Ireland it breeds 
in every county, even in the remote west. 
The Spotted Flycatcher breeds as far north as Tromso in Norway 
and Archangel in Russia; while southward it is tolerably abundant 
throughout Europe, nesting down to the northern shores of the 
Mediterranean ; also on the African side, and in Asia Minor, Pales- 
tine, Persia, Turkestan, and Siberia as far as Irkutsk. In winter it 
visits India, Arabia, and Africa to Cape Colony. It leaves our 
islands and the northern portion of Europe in September, but in the 
south the abundance of insect food enables it to remain later; and 
in Asia Minor it has even been obtained late in November. 
