FLY-CATCHER, Museicapa, a genus of birds of the order insessores, tribe dentirostres, and family museicapidm, having a moderately long angular bill, broad and depressed at the base, compressed and slightly curved at the point; the base surrounded with hairs or bristles directed forwards, and which help to secure insect prey. The legs and feet are small; the outer toe the longest, and attached to the middle one as far as the first joint. The wings are not long; their first quill-feather is very short; the third is the longest. The birds of this genuS, as now restricted, are exclusively confined to the old world, and mostly to the warmer parts of it. Of the numerous North American birds often called fly-catchers, some . belong to nearly allied genera, and others to genera not now ranked even in the same family. The true fly-catchers all have the habit— characteristic of many of the museicapithe beside this genus—of remaining perched for a long time in the same spot, only leaving it to make a sudden dart at a passing insect, which is seized with a snap of the bill, and then returning. They are almost never to be seen running on the ground, or even on the branches of trees, and do not chase insects in the air like swallows. Only four species are European, two of which are
British—the SPOTTED F. (M. grisola) and the PIED F. (M. atrieapilla or /wctuoso); birds about the size of a sparrow, the former of which is common in most parts of England, as a summer bird of passage, but rare in Scotland; the latter is rare in Britain, although abundant in the s. of Europe. The spotted F. is brownish gray above, white beneath, the head and breast marked with dusky spots. Its voice is a mere chirp. It is remark able for the choice it makes of situations for its nest, often on a beam in an outhouse, on the side of a fagot-stack, on the branch of a tree trained against A building, and sometimes even on a lamp-post in a street. Mr. Durham Weir of Boghead, who was a diligent observer of the habits of birds, mentions that lie witnessed a single pair of spotted fly-catchers feed their young no fewer than 537 times in one day, and that their motions were so rapid that he could not keep his eye off the nest for a moment.
The name F. is often extended to other genera, and is sometimes used as co-exten sive in signification with that of the family muscicapUte.