It is a charming sight to see the parent bird catch its prey when on the wing, and carrying it promptly to the nest within the creeper. “Not only tiny insects and moths go there, but also the bodies, denuded of their wings, of many a white cabbage butterfly, which would otherwise have deposited her small white eggs on the leaves of the cauliflowers in the kitchen garden close at hand. These eggs would become green grubs, which would injure the plants and make them unfit for food. The quick eyes of the bird and his clever flight put an end to the mischief so far as many a cauliflower is concerned. Flies, beetles, and aphides in hosts are devoured--the last especially during August, when they come in myriads from hop fields, or fruit trees--damsons; and the Flycatchers will clear the gooseberry bushes of the hurtful sawfly. Macgillivray has recorded that he noted a parent bird bring food to the nest five hundred and thirty-seven times during one day! Flycatchers come back to the same nesting place year after year. They may take a little fruit from you in the shape of red currants, but this is open to doubt. Like other creatures, a change of diet is, perhaps, valuable to them; but their labours during the early summer surely entitle them to a share of the fruit.”[3] * * * * * The Spotted Flycatcher is a little grey bird, smaller than the sparrow. The upper side of its body is mouse-colour, the underside whitish: on the breast and about the eyes are dark specks. The beak is black, flattened out wider at the base; the upper half of it furnished with stiff bristles on each side of the base to prevent its prey escaping. Legs black and weak; eyes dark and bright. The nest is usually built in trees, stumps of boughs, near the trunk, also in holes, but never very deep ones. It is beautifully woven, of fine moss, lichens, fine rootlets and grass, and is lined with wool, feathers and horse-hair. It contains five eggs of light grey-green, with dark marble-like veining and specks of rust-colour; the speckling is sometimes thicker in a ring round the larger end. THE PIED FLYCATCHER. (_Muscicapa atricapilla._) The male Pied Flycatcher is so strikingly marked a bird that he is almost dazzling to the eye. Yet he is only in black and white, but his markings are very decided. The female is more quietly feathered, the frontlet, wing-patches and under parts are a buffish-white, whilst her upper parts are olive-green. The bill is just like that of its congener already described. The nest is made in a hole in some tree, of dry grass, moss and rootlets with a lining of hair.