THE SPOTTED FLY-CATCHER.
This pretty little bird is also called the Beam or Pillar-Bird from the
position which it chooses for its nest. Building mostly in gardens,
it selects the projecting stone of a wall, the end of a beam or piece
of wood, under a low roof, or by a door or gateway, the nest being,
however, generally screened, and often made a perfect little bit
of picturesque beauty, by the leaves of some lovely creeping rose,
woodbine, or passionflower, which grows there.
This last summer, one of these familiar little birds, which, though
always seeming as if in a flutter of terror, must be fond of human
society, built in a rustic verandah, overrun with Virginian creeper, at
the back of our house.
[Illustration:
SPOTTED FLY-CATCHERS AND NEST. [Page 86.
]
According to her peculiar fancy she built exactly in the doorway,
though there were some yards of verandah on either hand; but here was
the convenient ledge, forming an angle with the upright support; and
here was placed, as in our picture, the small, somewhat flat nest,
beautifully, though slightly, put together, of dried grass and moss,
lined with wool and hair. Here the mother-bird laid her four or five
greyish-white eggs, with their spots of rusty red, and here she reared
her young. She had, however, it seemed to us, an uncomfortable time of
it, for, though we carefully avoided giving her needless disturbance
that we almost ceased to use the door, yet there was an unavoidable
passing to and fro to which she never seemed to get accustomed,
starting off her nest with a little flutter whenever we came in sight;
nor—although before she had finished sitting the quick-growing shoots
of the Virginian creeper, with its broadly-expanding leaves, hid her
nest so completely that, had it not been for her own timidity, we need
not have known of her presence—she never lost this peculiar trait of
character.
The nest which Mr. Harrison Weir has drawn is, doubtless, taken from
life. I wish, however, he could have seen ours, only about ten feet
from the ground, a little dome of love, embowered amongst young shoots,
vine-like leaves and tendrils—a perfectly ideal nest, in which our
friend, who has as keen a sense of natural beauty as any artist living,
would have delighted himself.
The colours of this bird are very unobtrusive: the upper parts
brownish-grey, the head spotted with brown, the neck and breast
streaked or spotted with greyish-brown. It is a migratory bird, and
arrives in this country about the middle or end of May, remaining with
us till about the middle of October, by which time the flies on which
it lives have generally disappeared.
[Sidenote: _How it takes its Prey._]
Its mode of taking its winged prey is curious. Seated, stock-still,
in a twig, it darts or glides off at the sight of an insect, like the
bird of our picture, and seizes it with a little snapping noise; then
returns to its perch ready for more, and so on; incessantly darting out
and returning to the same spot, till it has satisfied its hunger, or
moves off to another twig to commence the same pursuit.
When they have young, the number of flies consumed only by one little
family must be amazing. It is recorded[B] in one instance that a pair
of fly-catchers, beginning to feed their nestlings at five-and-twenty
minutes before seven in the morning, and continuing their labour till
ten minutes before nine at night, supplied them with food, that is to
say with flies, no less than five hundred and thirty-seven times. The
gentleman who made these observations says:—“Before they fed their
young they alighted upon a tree for a few seconds, and looked round
about them. By short jerks they usually caught the winged insects.
Sometimes they ascended into the air and dropped like an arrow; at
other times they hovered like a hawk when set on its prey. They drove
off most vigorously all kinds of small birds that approached their
nest, as if bidding them to go and hunt in their own grounds, where
there were plenty of flies for them. Sometimes they brought only one
fly in their bills, sometimes several, and flies of various sizes.”
[Footnote B: See Macgillivray’s “_British Birds_.”]
This bird seems to become attached to particular localities, where
he finds himself conveniently situated and undisturbed. Mr. Mudie
mentions, in his “Feathered Tribes,” “that a pair of these birds had
nested in his garden for twelve successive years.” What is the length
of life of a fly-catcher I cannot say; but probably if they were
not the same birds, they would be their descendants—birds hatched
there, and consequently at home. The Rev. J. G. Wood also speaks of
the same locality having been used by this bird for twenty successive
years; and he supposes that the young had succeeded to their ancestral
home. He gives also an interesting account of the commencement of a
nest-building by this bird. He says that the female, who seems to be
generally the active builder, placed, in the first instance, a bundle
of fine grass in some conveniently-forked branches, and after having
picked it about for some time, as if regularly shaking it up, she
seated herself in the middle of it, and there, spinning herself round
and round, gave it its cup-like form. She then fetched more grasses,
and after arranging them partly round the edge, and partly on the
bottom, repeated the spinning process. A few hairs and some moss were
then stuck about the nest and neatly woven in, the hair and slender
vegetable fibres being the thread, so to speak, with which the moss was
fastened to the nest.
[Sidenote: _Mr. Mudie on Nest-building._]
Mr. Mudie, also speaking of their nest-building, says that, in one
instance which came under his notice, “the bird began at seven o’clock
on a Tuesday morning, and the nest was finished in good time on Friday
afternoon.” This was certainly rapid work. Mr. Yarrell says that the
he-bird brings the materials to the hen, who makes use of them—which
is stated as a general fact by Michelet—and that in constructing her
nest the little fly-catcher, after she had rounded it into its first
form, moves backwards as she weaves into it long hairs and grasses with
her bill, continually walking round and round her nest. This, however,
can only be when the situation of the nest will allow of her passing
round it. Our fly-catcher’s nest, and the nest of our picture, are
placed as a little bed close to the wall, and in such situations the
nest has sometimes no back, but simply the lining. A very favourite
place with the fly-catcher for her nest is the hole in a wall, the
size of a half brick, in which the builder fixed the spar of his
scaffolding, and omitted to fill up when he had finished. In these
convenient little nooks the fly-catcher’s nest fills the whole front
of the opening, but has seldom any back to it. From all this, I think
it is clear that the fly-catcher is, in her arrangements, guided by
circumstances: only, in every case, her little home is as snug as it
can be.
[Illustration]