This elegant and beautiful little species ranks itself amongst my list
of favourites. It visits this country the beginning of April, and leaves
it in August, or the beginning of September. It is generally to be found
in summer amongst tall trees in woods and plantations, where it is
readily detected on its arrival, by a shrill shaking sort of note that
may be heard at a great distance, and cannot be confounded with any
other bird. On its first arrival it sings the greater part of the day,
and continues its song, more or less, through the summer, except at the
time it is engaged in feeding its young. Its nest is built on the ground
in a thicket amongst moss and dead leaves, so that it is impossible to
find it without watching one of the old ones to the nest, which is
easily done when they have young. They may either be tamed when old, or
reared from the nest, and are not difficult to be caught when young with
a little bird-lime at the end of a fishing-rod, as may several other
species of this interesting group.
As the present species feeds entirely upon insects when wild, the
greater part of which it catches on the wing, it will be useless to give
it any sort of fruit or berry; but bread and milk, bruised hemp-seed and
bread, with bits of fresh lean meat cut very small and mixed up in it,
will be its general food. It is also very fond of the yolk of an egg
boiled hard, and crumbled small, or stirred up with the point of a knife
that it may peck it out of the shell as it likes. Sometimes these birds
are apt to get off their other food, and will live on egg several days;
at such a time if a few flies could be procured for them, it would be
the most likely to restore their appetite.