RED-BREASTED FLYCATCHER. 335 



Flycatcher. We soon heard a song which was new to me, but we followed 

 it a long time before we could see the bird. It was a very unobtrusive 

 song, intermediate between the notes o£ the Robin and the Redstart. For 

 some time the bird kept at the top of the beeches. It was as restless as a 

 Redstart ; and we followed it in vain, until, just as the sun was setting, he 

 came down upon the lower branches and sang his simple song within 

 twenty feet of us. We might have mistaken him for a Robin with his 

 red breast, but every now and then he half spread his tail and showed the 

 white on it. A few days later (on the 11th of June) Dr. Holland and I 

 went to a forest beyond Schlave to take the nest of a Honey-Buzzard. 

 In the forest we several times heard the alarm-note of the Red-breasted 

 Flycatcher, a pink, pink, pink, something like the spink of a Chaffinch, but 

 softer, clearer, and quicker. Our guide showed us presently a nest, scarcely 

 six feet from the ground, in a hollow in the trunk of a beech tree. We 

 caught the bird on the nest. He also showed us a second nest which he 

 had taken a few days before, likewise composed principally of green moss ; 

 but it had been built close against the stem of a beech, supported by a 

 bunch of small twigs, which made a convenient shelf for it. In its habits 

 this charming little bird reminds one both of a Flycatcher and a Tit. It 

 catches insects on the wing with ease, and flutters before the trunk of a 

 tree to pick an insect off the bark. 



The nest of the Red-breasted Flycatcher is a very handsome little 

 structure, almost entirely formed of green moss, with here and there a few 

 scraps of lichen and a downy feather or two. The inside is sparingly lined 

 with fine dry grass and hairs. The nest-cavity measures about two inches 

 in diameter and one and a half inch in depth. Many of the eggs of 

 this bird very closely resemble Robin^'s eggs in colour, others as closely 

 the eggs of the Spotted Flycatcher. They are the palest of bluish 

 green in ground-colour, closely freckled with reddish-brown and greyish- 

 brown shell -markings. Some eggs are much greener in general 

 coloration, and the amount of spotting also differs considerably. A 

 clutch of five in my collection are an almost uniform pinkish brown, with 

 scarcely a trace of the ground-colour discernible, and somewhat resemble 

 certain varieties of the Blackcap's eggs. Some specimens have most of 

 the markings confined to a zone round the larger end. The eggs are 

 from five to seven in number, and vary from '07 to '06 inch in length, and 

 from "Si to 5 inch in breadth. 



The Red-breasted Flycatcher has the general colour of the upper parts, 

 except the crown, nape, and sides of the head and neck, which are bluish 

 grey, olive-brown; central tail-feathers blackish brown, the outer ones 

 white at base and broadly tipped with blackish brown; throat and breast 

 orange-chestnut; rest of underparts white, suffused on the flanks and under 

 tail-coverts with buff. Beak brown, paler at the base ; irides hazel ; legs. 



