THE RED-BREASTED FLYCATCHER Muscicapa parva, Bechstein
This species is of irregular and local distribution in Eastern Europe as far west as certain portions of Germany and South-east France, and it is only a few stragglers, driven out of their course by adverse weather or carried along by a rush of other migrants, that reach our coast.
In size it resembles our common species of Flycatcher, but differs in coloration. The adult males are of a uniform greyish brown above, with ashy grey cheeks and with the chin and throat reddish orange. The females and young lack the ash grey on the head, and the reddish orange of the chin and breast is very much paler. Young males do not acquire the red breast for two or three years. The four outer pairs of tail feathers have conspicuous white bases. Length 5·1 in.; wing 2·8 in.
Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries surrounding bird life, and awaking, even in the most unthinking, some sense of wonder, is the way in which some of the smallest and most delicate of birds cross enormous stretches of land and water twice a year. This mystery of migration has been especially typified in many countries and from olden times in the Swallow. Essentially a bird of the air, choosing the houses of man for nesting-places, and extremely abundant throughout our islands, he cannot fail to force himself on our attention and to become so associated in our minds with summer days that his first appearance in spring is eagerly looked for. As soon as the March winds have died down the first few stragglers make their appearance, and the early October gales are well over before the last has left.
During the whole of April they continue to arrive and disperse through the country, and by the beginning of May we shall find them revisiting the same chimney or eave where their brood was hatched in the previous year. They have but a feeble love-song, merely a rapid twittering, which is especially indulged in during the early hours of dawn, while waiting for the sun to call to life the flies and gnats on which they breakfast. Choosing a beam in a barn or outhouse, or a projecting brick in some old chimney as support, they build a neat cup-shaped nest of mud strengthened with straw to bind it together, and line it with bents, dry grass, and feathers. The eggs, generally six in number, are of a white ground colour dotted or blotched with reddish brown. The duties of incubation devolve on the hen, who is frequently fed by her mate, but soon after the young are hatched and she is free once more to seek her own food, both parents take their share in the duties of housekeeping.