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Updated: June 22, 2025
This neighborhood, if the accounts of his character are to be credited, should be the congenial home of the kingbird, tyrant flycatcher he is named; but as a matter of fact, not only were the smaller flycatchers conspicuous by their absence, but the king himself was never seen, and the flying tribes of the insect world, so far as dull-eyed mortals could see, grew and flourished.
Terpsiphone affinis. The Burmese paradise flycatcher. This replaces the Indian species in the Eastern Himalayas, but it is not found so high up as Darjeeling, being confined to the lower ranges. The other flycatchers commonly seen in the Eastern Himalayas are: 48. Rhipidura allicollis. The white-throated fantail flycatcher. This beautiful bird is abundant in the vicinity of Darjeeling.
Robins do not breed in flocks, but in pairs. Every gas is a vacuum to every other gas; and every locality is a vacuum to the different species of birds that breed there. The seed-eaters, the fruit-eaters, the insect-eaters, and the omnivorous feeders, like the robin in other words, the sparrows, the flycatchers, the warblers may and do all live together in harmony in the same narrow area.
"Many a May morning," she says, "have I wandered about the rock at the foot of the tower, mourning over a little apron brimful of sparrows, swallows, thrushes, robins, fire-winged blackbirds, many- colored warblers and flycatchers, beautifully clothed yellow-birds, nuthatches, catbirds, even the purple finch and scarlet tanager and golden oriole, and many more beside, enough to break the heart of a small child to think of!
Another April bird, which makes her appearance sometimes earlier and sometimes later than Robin, and whose memory I fondly cherish, is the phoebe-bird, the pioneer of the flycatchers. In the inland farming districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter Day, proclaiming her arrival, with much variety of motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay-shed.
Especially designed by nature to capture insects in midair, their powers of flight and endurance are unexcelled, and in their own field they have no competitors. Their peculiar value to the cotton grower consists in the fact that, like the nighthawk, they capture boll weevils when flying over the fields, which no other birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery.
With that mental picture to guide him he believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse, every room and passage in the old house.
In the second case of flycatchers are grouped the true flycatchers, which are mostly from the old world; those from America being the solitary flycatcher, the black-headed flycatcher, the king and broad-billed tody, and the white-eared thrush. In the first case, are groups of the Asiatic and American thick-heads, and the gorgeous little Manakins of South America and Australia.
The flycatchers always take their insect prey on the wing, by a sudden darting or swooping movement; often a very audible snap of the beak may be heard. These birds are the least elegant, both in form and color, of any of our feathered neighbors. They have short legs, a short neck, large heads, and broad, flat beaks, with bristles at the base.
The genera Ceyx among Kingfishers, Criniger among Thrushes, Rhipidura among Flycatchers, Calornis among Starlings, and Erythrura among Finches, are all found in the Moluccas as well as in Borneo and Java but not a single species belonging to any one of them is found in Celebes.
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