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Updated: June 22, 2025
The decaying wood of fallen trees is a paradise for ants, flies, and beetles; offering to swallows, creepers, and flycatchers feasts of abundance never dreamed of in the primitive forests.
To show that our birds are unique, it is relevant to say that there are only two species of scissors-tailed flycatchers in North America, which have the genus Milvulus all to themselves. He is a sort of southern twin of our scissorstail. The nests of the scissorstails are set in the crotches of trees in the neighborhood of country homes on the prairie.
Those known as flycatchers may do neither harm nor good; so far as they eat the wheat-midge and Hessian fly they confer a positive benefit; in other instances they destroy both friends and enemies. Birds that are only partly insectivorous, and which eat grain and fruit, may need further inquiry. Prof.
Nor was that the end of the exhibition, for in a moment a second scissorstail, the precise facsimile of the first, appeared from somewhere, and the two flycatchers combined against their enemy. Then for a few minutes there was such a chaos of shrike and scissorstail that we could scarcely tell which was which.
A pair of interesting birds had arrived; at any time in the day they could be seen swooping down from the branch of a certain apple-tree and back again to their starting-place without having touched the ground. "Flycatchers!" said Turner exultantly. "I shall ha' to look about. They got their nest somewhere near, you may be sure o' that! Ah! look now! There he goes again!
The common or wood pewee excites the most pleasant emotions, both on account of its plaintive note and its exquisite mossy nest. The phoebe-bird is the pioneer of the flycatchers, and comes in April, sometimes in March. Its comes familiarly about the house and outbuildings, and usually builds beneath hay-sheds or under bridges.
I will conclude my description of the natural history of these islands, by giving an account of the extreme tameness of the birds. This disposition is common to all the terrestrial species; namely, to the mocking-thrushes, the finches, wrens, tyrant- flycatchers, the dove, and carrion-buzzard.
Then as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of warblers, thrushes, finches, and flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone rises the divine contralto of the hermit.
Each has its own speech, inarticulate, expressing not thought but hereditary feeling; save a few birds who, like those little dumb darlings, the spotted flycatchers, seem to have absolutely nothing to say, and accordingly have the wit to hold their tongues; and devote the whole of their small intellect to sitting on the iron rails, flitting off them a yard or two to catch a butterfly in air, and flitting back with it to their nest.
Cut of about seventy land-birds inhabiting Ceram, only fifteen are found in New Guinea, and none of these are terrestrial or forest-haunting species. The cassowary is distinct; the kingfishers, parrots, pigeons, flycatchers, honeysuckers, thrushes, and cuckoos, are almost always quite distinct species.
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