M USCICA PA A TRIG A PILL A 
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a grouse.” Sand-grouse are known to have frequented these 
denes in 1888, and it was on the adjoining beach that the dead 
specimen, afterwards sent to Sir Edward Newton, was found. 
William A. Dutt. 
MUSCICAPA ATRICAPILLA. 
S a pair of these birds nested in a box placed for them in 
the garden during the summer of 1897, brought 
off their brood in safety, a few particulars of the event 
may be worth recording. 
This particular pair were not among the first arrivals in the 
neighbourhood. By April 29 — and possibly a few days earlier, 
for I was from home — two cock pied flycatchers had returned 
to their old stations on a strip of adjacent woodland, and on 
May I the new-come hen of one of them was arranging, in a 
very quiet and matter-of-fact manner, for a fresh household in 
their last year’s nest-hole. 
However, old cock birds are generally in front of young ones. 
Besides, if the migrating hen flies straight back to her old nest- 
station as well as the cock (as seemed to be the case in this 
instance, as well as in another noticed last year), and if the old 
nest-hole is used again by them, no time is lost. There is then 
no delay in finding and courting a stray mate, none in dis- 
covering a right sort of hole — and about this last there is often 
great trouble and difficulty. Also the old birds are much less 
demonstrative than the young ones : they take everything — 
migration, courtship, furnishing — more as a matter of course. 
In last year’s instance the old cock sang in his oak-home from 
arrival on April 21 to April 25 most beautifully, volubly, and 
with great variety of notes — and there is an immense difference 
in the singing of this species. But on the morning of the 25th, 
when his hen had come and was beginning with him very 
cautiously to fit up the hole afresh, he was positively silent ; 
from which I conclude his singing to have been a signal. 
Now, I believe our garden pied flycatcher was a young bird. 
His plumage was more brown than jetty ; his white wing and 
head patches were not large, nor his breast snowy — indeed, there 
was a smutty fleck in the middle of its grey. His strains also 
were undeniably weak and poor. At all events, it was not till 
the morning of May 6 that, upon opening the house-door for 
an early walk, I heard the well-known strains pealing jubilantly 
over and over again from the scarlet oak in which the box was 
placed, and knew that I had lured my bird. There he was, 
flitting excitedly about the bare tree and the garden rail below, 
not the most beautiful of his kind, but a real pied flycatcher, 
in actual and delightful fact. 
The morning was cold, with a high east wind, and our great 
