BRITISH BIRDS. 
35 
The Flycatcher, of all our summer birds, is the most 
mute. It visits this island in the spring, and disappears 
in September. The female builds her nest commonly 
in gardens, on any projecting stone in a wall, or on 
the end of a beam, screened by the leaves of a vine, 
sweet-brier, or woodbine, and sometimes close to the 
post of a door, where people are going in and out all 
day long. The nest is rather carelessly made; it is 
composed chiefly of moss and dried grass, mixed in 
the inside with some wool, and a few hairs. She lays 
four or five eggs, of a dull white, closely spotted and 
blotched with rusty red. This bird feeds on insects, 
for which it sits watching on a branch or on a post, 
suddenly dropping down upon them, and catching 
them on the wing, and immediately rising, returns 
again to its station to wait for more. After the young 
have quitted the nest, the parent birds follow them 
from tree to tree, and watch them with the most 
sedulous attention. They feed them with the flies 
which flutter among the boughs beneath ; or pursuing 
their insect prey with a quick irregular kind of flight, 
like that of a butterfly, to a greater distance, they im- 
mediately return as before described. 
F 
