THE MARSH WARBLER'S MUSIC 203 



it only became known in quite recent years that the 

 marsh warbler is a British breeding species! It had 

 been regarded previously as a chance or occasional 

 visitor from the Continent, until Mr. Warde Fowler 

 discovered that it was a regular summer visitant to 

 Oxfordshire, also that it was the latest of our migrants 

 to arrive and a later breeder by several weeks. It 

 is curious that in a small country so infested with 

 ornithologists as ours this species should have been 

 overlooked. They, the ornithologists and collectors, 

 say that it is not so, that a bird with so beautiful a 

 song, so unlike that of his nearest relations the reed 

 and sedge warblers, could not have been overlooked. 

 Undoubtedly it was overlooked, and this colony, or 

 group of colonies, numbering seventy or more pairs, 

 must be quite an ancient one. There are others too 

 in Somerset, and no doubt many besides in the west 

 country and Midlands. The species has not diffused 

 itself more in the country, I imagine, on account of 

 its habit of nesting almost exclusively in the withy 

 beds, where their nests are as much exposed to de- 

 struction as those of the skylark and landrail in the 

 corn. The moist grounds where the willows are 

 planted are covered annually with a luxuriant growth 

 of grasses and herbage which must be cut down to 

 give air and life to the willows. The cutting usually 

 takes place about mid-June when the eggs are being 

 laid and incubation is already in progress in many 

 nests. The nests, whether attached to the withies or 

 to the tall stems of the meadow-sweet and other 

 plants, are mostly destroyed. 



