44 LOST AND VANISHING BIRDS 



name. All the evidence we possess relating to the 

 British distribution of Savi's Warbler indicates the 

 very restricted nature of its habitat. So far as is 

 known, this Warbler was confined to the fens of 

 Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire. 

 Like the Dartford Warbler, it was therefore one of 

 our most local species — a significant fact, as we shall 

 shortly learn. 



In our opening chapter we have pointed out 

 the usual fate that overtakes species localised on 

 islands, when their conditions of life are seriously 

 changed. Precisely the same remarks apply to 

 Savi's Warbler ; its very localness (as was equally 

 the case with the Large Copper Butterfly, a denizen 

 of the same fenland wastes) was the principal 

 cause of its rapid final extinction. No direct war 

 was waged against it, but its few chosen haunts 

 were reclaimed and brought into cultivation, so 

 that existence in them became impossible. Had 

 Savi's Warbler been more widely distributed, like 

 its congener the Grasshopper Warbler, for instance, 

 there can be no reasonable doubt that it would 

 have been in existence as a British species to-day. 

 It is a rather remarkable fact that such a species 

 should have had so restricted a distribution in our 

 islands, and one that seems to suggest that its 



