GARDEN-WARBLER AND BLACKCAP IN CLYDE AREA 43 



THE GARDEN-WARBLER AND THE BLACKCAP 

 IN THE CLYDE AREA. 



By John Robertson. 



In most books on British Birds the information as to the 

 distribution of the Garden-Warbler in Scotland is scanty. 

 When Robert Gray wrote The Birds of the West of Scotland, 

 about 1870, it is clear that he had no personal acquaintance 

 with the bird in the Clyde area, his only reference being to 

 Inverkip, where one of his correspondents, Mr Sinclair, had 

 first heard it singing two or three summers previously. 



At the present time the Garden-Warbler is common in 

 Clyde. In my experience woods, copses, gardens, and 

 pleasure grounds are all haunts of this species, provided the 

 necessary thicket, in which to nest, is present. This may 

 be of bramble, briar, blackthorn and the like clumps of 

 rhododendrons and laurels are equally suitable but there 

 must be a combination of bush and taller tree before the 

 bird will take up its summer quarters. In such situations 

 the species is found everywhere throughout the area. It 

 even comes annually to several spots within the southern 

 municipal boundaries of Glasgow, and in 19 18 it penetrated 

 to the Queen's Park, where a pair nested in the Camphill 

 Gardens. The Garden-Warbler usually arrives for the 

 summer about the second week in May, from the 7th to 

 the 1 2th, but in 19 14 three males had arrived and were 

 singing well in Rouken Glen on the 26th of April. In good 

 seasons the first eggs in the earliest nests are laid round 

 about 19th May. I have only once found a second nest 

 after the first brood was successfully reared. To me the 

 eggs of the Garden- Warbler are hardly to be distinguished 

 from those of the Blackcap that I have come across. 

 The nests, however, seem to be distinctive, that of the 

 Blackcap having a wider cup, and the lining of more 

 wiry fibres, giving to the interior a darker appearance, as 

 well as binding the structure together more securely. Both 

 species have a habit of placing their nests on an insecure 



