mth incidental Hemarks. 343 



21st. Sedge warblers tolerably plentiful. 



23d. Common swifts (Cypseliis murarius) arrived. Also 

 the white-breasted fauvette, or lesser whitethroat (Curruca 

 garrula). This species is rather irregular in its appearance, 

 and Montagu extends the period of its arrival " from April 2 1 , 

 to May 10." In the spring of 1831, its nest, containing four 

 eggs, was brought to me on the 23d of April. Last year I 

 did not observe it till the beginning of May. Here it is very 

 abundant; and I may avail myself of the present opportunity 

 to offer a few remarks on the species. 



It is certainly strange, that so common a bird as this is, an 

 inhabitant of gardens and orchards, and roadsides, in the 

 immediate vicinity of houses, and conspicuous from its rest- 

 less activity, and its perpetual reiteration of a loud and pecu- 

 liar note, should be so little knov/n to naturalists as very 

 generally to be considered rare; and be described, by all our 

 writers on ornithology, to inhabit only the thickest under- 

 wood ; yet such is the case : and, even in the late edition of 

 Mr. Selby's work, it is said to inhabit " the thickest hedges, in 

 which it conceals itself with great adroitness; and the in- 

 tricacies of which it threads with the rapidity of a mouse ; on 

 which account, specimens are only to be obtained with diffi- 

 culty, and by patient watching." And, again : — " Its retired 

 habits, and the impatience of observation which it so con- 

 stantly exhibits, in always ensconcing itself amidst the thickest 

 entanglements of hedges or underwood," &c. The words, 

 also, of Mr. Mudie, in his Feathered Tribes, are to the same 

 purport, representing it to keep much closer to the hedges 

 than the common whitethroat. Much of this is, however, 

 erroneous; for the haunts of this bird are not much in the 

 hedgerow nor in the tangled underwood, but more upon the 

 trees than those of the whitethroat, and not unfrequently on 

 the tops of the highest elms : whence its shrill and monotonous 

 concluding note (which much resembles the song of the cirl 

 bunting, or the sound jV^, or glieei, repeated several times in 

 quick succession) may be heard at a considerable distance. 

 I have noticed it to be particularly partial to elms ; so much 

 so, that, when rambling through different parts of the country, 

 I have approached a spot where a few elms have grown out 

 of the hedge, and especially if a ditch were at their feet, I 

 have often, as a matter of course, looked out for this active 

 little bird, and scarcely remember an instance of failing to see 

 it in such situations. It may almost always be observed, also, 

 about little cottage gardens ; and, when the cherries begin to 

 ripen, no species is more eager in its attacks upon them ; nor 

 are its habits so retired, nor its impatience of observation so 



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