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._]