M USCICA PA A TRICA PILL A 175 
straight off to a distant tree, where they carefully wiped their 
beaks. By this time the young were chirping loud. 
On the 20th the hen fussed over a distant cat, and on the 
2ist a youngster was leaning far out of the nest, with another 
behind. By the afternoon all had flown : the nest was empty. 
Not a youngster remained even in the scarlet oak, and the only 
one I could locate was alreadj' at a distance of some forty yards 
in a rowan-tree, below the river-side oak. It was a most 
immature little body, browny and speckled with tiny wing- 
patches, while already it swung its short, wide tail up and down. 
It chirped loudly, and was frequently fed by the cock, who tried 
to entice it higher up the oak-tree. Indeed, I think these birds 
get their youngsters almost at once out of sight to the tops of 
trees, for last year I discovered, by accident, a hen pied flycatcher 
feeding her fledglings in the top of an oak-tree, when the three 
of them were so immature as to cuddle in a heap and tumble 
over each other on the big, horizontal bough. 
By the next day all our birds had disappeared from the 
garden. I believe, however, they had only crossed to the oaks 
at the other side the river, for thither on the 27th they were 
tracked through the cock, who now began, with the burden of his 
family lifting from his shoulders, to sing again weakly, and to 
preen himself inertly in the trees. Still, on the 29th he followed 
a cat with fussy cries, and still, after winging for flies in the 
sycamore-bough, carried a contribution to some hidden chirping 
youngsters. But after this they vanished altogether. Were 
they gone for good ? 
I thought so. But now came an interesting episode, one 
that confirms my idea that birds, after wandering from their 
nest-centre, often return to it again before the start of their 
long migration. On July 18 a young pied flycatcher alighted on 
the garden-rail by the river, eyeing me curiously as I sat, and 
swinging its dark tail — a sure mark of species, that distinguished 
it more than any other from the very similar young spotted fly- 
catchers about the palings at the same time. After feeding 
a while it passed on to the scarlet-oak, and thither also went, 
passing more swiftly, other birds. Then I heard the “ spick ” 
cry ; heard it, too, at day-close from the shady bank where the 
hen had been wont to retire, and continued to hear it till July 29, 
without, however, ever catching a glimpse of the birds. That 
Vv^as the last of the pied flycatchers, for that summer. 
Mary L. Armitt. 
