An Unfortunate Moth. 181 
three minutes he flies swiftly from his perch a few 
yards, darts on an insect—you cannot see it, but can 
distinctly hear the snap of the bill—and returns to his 
post. He uses the same perch for half an hour or 
more ; then shifts to another at a little distance, and 
so works all round the orchard, but regularly comes 
back to the same spot. By waiting near it you may 
be certain of seeing him presently ; and he is very 
tame, and will carry on operations within a few yards 
—sometimes picking up a fly almost within reach of 
your hand. It is noticeable that many insect-eating 
birds are especially tame. They will occasionally dart 
after a moth, but drop it again—as if they did not 
care for that kind of food, and yet could not resist 
the habit of snapping at such things. 
I once saw a flycatcher rush after a buff-coloured 
moth, which fluttered aimlessly out of a shady recess : 
he snapped it, held it a second or two while hovering 
in the air, and then let it go. Instantly a swallow 
swooped down, caught the moth, and bore it thirty or 
forty feet high, then dropped it, when, as the moth 
came slowly down, another swallow seized it and car- 
ried it some yards and then left hold, and the poor 
creature after all went free. I have seen other in- 
Stances of swallows catching good-sized moths to let 
them go again. 
The brown linnet is another regular visitor build- 
ing in the orchard ; so too the blackcap, whose song, 
though short, is sweet; and the bold bright bull- 
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