MUSCICAPA ATRICAPILLA 
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daybreak, and were generally desisted from in good time in the 
forenoon, when men most do go abroad. The little builder also 
became much more secret and much more agile at her building, 
collecting mostly when unseen upon the shady bank, and thence 
shooting straight as an arrow — and so swiftly as scarce to be 
detected — into the hole. Four days she laboured hard, and often 
after — even after laying had commenced, I think — carried up a 
contribution to the heap, until this filled a box-space measuring 
4! in. by 7 in. and 4 in. deep almost full to the top hole. 
In all this stuff, which consisted of grass-stems, rootlets, a 
sycamore seed-case, &c., all very fine and dry and light, there 
was no hair, and but one fragment of moss. Yet I have seen a 
woodland builder tear off moss from the trunk of a tree as well 
as break off rotten wood. The cushion spread equally all over 
the box, but at the farther end a neat bowl was hollowed for the 
eggs. 
Towards the close of these labours, not only the hen became 
more cautious in her approach to the cherished spot, but the 
cock began regularly to absent himself, and might be found 
singing and feeding at quite a considerable distance away. 
However, returns had naturally to be made, and then he would 
escort his mate in the most joyous and demonstrative fashion. 
I’receding her, he would sing at every halt, and enticing her into 
the nest, would hang to the edge warbling faintly. At the same 
time he became very combative, would fly at great tit or sparrow 
venturing near with angry, rasping noises, while a misguided 
pair of spotted flycatchers that found the scarlet oak a con- 
venient post Qver against their proposed nest upon the stable, 
he hustled incontinently about their business. His joy reached 
its prettiest height about May 18, when laying was presumably 
over, and his hen went into the nest as if to stay and sit. He 
then remained near, feeding and chasing other birds. He sang 
his loudest, fanned his tail, and moved it slowly up and down, 
and even — what is rarely done by the pied flycatcher, and only 
in excess of joy — circled out singing on the wing. “ Clwee- 
clwee, clwee-fu, clee-fu,” sang he, in tones not unlike those of 
the great titmouse. 
However, when his hen was fairly settled to her long task, 
prudence again prevailed, and he left the spot. Whether it is a 
delusion to suppose that any cock-bird sings to cheer his mate in 
her long seclusion I do not know; but certainly our bird sang for 
no such reason, for he went quite beyond her hearing, and when 
danger threatened her he was not near enough to know it.* 
Indeed, all became so silent and still about the scarlet oak that I 
feared some accident and desertion of the nest. And so on the 
27th it was entered, — the only disturbance we gave them, — and 
when the lid was raised the little brown hen was disclosed, 
* I have known exactly this state to prevail at the same stage of the wood 
warbler’s nesting. To allay suspicion the cock-bird appears to keep away. 
