THE SEDGE-WARBLER 47 



from you, at once resuming their song ; for they are saucy, 

 provoking, jolly Httle creatures, and I prefer their song to 

 that professional musician, the reed-warbler, as he has too 

 much " side " for me. 



Towards the end of May, when the last frosts have gone, 

 the little pairs begin to build their nests, preferring sallow 

 bushes in a sedge marsh; but hedgerows near water, or 

 clumps of reed in half-choked dikes, or clumps of rush suit 

 them, if they cannot get a sallow forest on a sedgy plain ; and 

 at this season you will hear the cock's bright song by day 

 and night all over the flatland, for these birds are four times 

 as numerous as the cock reed-warblers, whom they most 

 resemble. 



Should his nursery's aspect be too exposed, he will hide 

 his nest behind a rush screen, and once or twice I have 

 known him hang it from a branch of a bush, or two or three 

 reeds, after the manner of the reed-warbler, but differing in 

 this, that he always hangs his nest from one side, and 

 never builds it about the reed stalks and branches, as does 

 the reed-warbler. What he uses to build with depends, as 

 in the case of most birds, on what materials are handiest; 

 also, the nest is placed at various heights from the ground, 

 according to circumstances. I have known it to be built 

 a few inches from the ground, a foot, two feet, and two feet 

 six. In any of these positions you may see their long nest, 

 but most frequently in stuff half-laid down, with its contracted 

 rim, built of fine dead grass externally, and lined with horse- 

 hair and wool, and reed feather. And when the little pair 

 have built their cradle, which generally takes them four 

 days, the hen begins forthwith to lay her sedge-green eggs, 

 speckled with hair-like markings, the colour of sedge-flowers 

 — the pair lurking near the nest after the first egg is laid, 

 the cock still flying up and crying as of yore. As a rule, 

 every morning an egg is laid, until five lie cosily in the nest 

 litter, and then she begins to sit, he singing joyously near 

 by from a reed-top, hanging this way and that, and dropping 



