312 BLYTH ON THE BRITISH FRUIT-EATING WAHIiLEKS. 



observed in any of the others. The babillard has the same vacillating 

 butterfly-like manner of flying as the whitethroat, but never mounts 

 singing into the air, like that bird and the furze-warbler. The habits 

 of the babillard closely resemble those of the blackcap, only it is much 

 more active and restless. Unlike the whitethroat (of which bird some 

 say it is only a variety !) it spends most of its time on trees, and may 

 not unfrequently be heard on the tops of the highest elms to one 

 babillard that may be heard singing in a bush, at least twenty or thirty 

 may be heard on trees ; the reverse is the case with the whitethroat, 

 which, though so very common a bird, is seldom heard from any great 

 height on a tree. The whitethroat and babillard are, in confinement, of 

 a much tamer and more familiar nature than the garden-warbler and 

 the blackcap. The Dartford warblers, also, which I have seen in con- 

 finement, were extremely familiar and tame. The whitethroat and 

 babillard will generally, a day or two after they are caught, take insect 

 food from the hand ; but it will often require months before the black- 

 cap and garden -warbler can be rendered sufficiently familiar, and when 

 at length they do, it is usually fruit and not insects which entices 

 them. The two latter birds will almost always leave insect food for 

 fruit ; the babillard and whitethroat will leave fruit to feed upon insects: 

 some blackcaps and garden-warblers, -indeed, seem quite indifferent to 

 insect food ; I had once a garden warbler which would readily take 

 fruit from the hand, but which I never knew to take an insect that 

 was thus offered to it. 



As but few persons are aware of the existence of the East Woodhay 

 warbler, as it has been termed, it would not be amiss here to give a slight 

 description of the bir.!,that the species might be recognised if obtained. 

 I have myself but very little doubt of its existence, though my endeavours 

 to procure it have been hitherto ineffectual ; its discoverers, Mr. Sweet 

 and the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, are too close observers of nature, and 

 manifest in their writings much too thorough a knowledge of the British 

 Sylmanaz to be mistaken easily in this particular. Mr. Sweet mentions 

 having seen several one summer attacking the fruit in a garden near 

 Bristol, and he adds that he never saw any of them but in that one 

 season. The Hon Mr. Herbert observed a pair of them in the parish 

 of East Woodhay, in Hampshire ; and he describes them as being 

 '' formed much like a whitethroat, but as large as a nightingale ; the 

 upper part rufous, with a dark line over the eye, the under parts of a 

 glossy silver colour, which shone very conspicuously in the sun. My 

 attention," he continues, " was at first attracted at a considerable dis- 



