202 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



that he had been making a good thing out of it. He 

 left me on the spot to experience that rarest delight 

 of the bird-seeker, the making the acquaintance of, 

 and growing hourly and daily more intimate with, 

 a new species. In this instance it was nothing but a 

 plain little brown bird, plainer than the nightingale 

 and hardly to be distinguished, even in the hand, 

 from the familiar reed warbler, but in virtue of its 

 melody of a lustre surpassing our blue kingfisher or 

 indeed any shining bird of the tropics. 



The colony was in a withy bed of a year's growth, 

 the plants being three or four feet high, the whole 

 ground being covered with a dense growth of tall 

 grasses and sedges, meadow-sweet, comfrey, and 

 nettles. It was moist and boggy in places but without 

 water, except in one small pool which served as a 

 drinking and bathing place to all the small birds 

 in the vicinity. 



Sitting on a mound a few feet above the surface I 

 could survey the whole field of seven to eight acres 

 enclosed by high hedges and old hedgerow elm and 

 oak trees on three sides, with a row of pollarded 

 willows on the other, and I was able to make out 

 about nine pairs of marsh warblers in the colony. 

 It was easy to count them, as each couple had its 

 own territory, and the males were conspicuous as 

 they were constantly flying about in pursuit of the 

 females or chasing away rival cocks, then singing 

 from the topmost twigs of the withy-bushes. This, 

 I found, was but one of a group of colonies, the birds 

 in all of which numbered about seventy pairs. Yet 



