The garden warbler 33 



Blackcap, not reaching its British haunts before the 

 end of April or early in May. Although very 

 similar in its habits and in the haunts it frequents to 

 the latter bird, it is much more retiring and apt to 

 be overlooked even in districts where it is compar- 

 atively common. It should also be remarked that 

 in localities where the Blackcap abounds the 

 Garden Warbler appears to be proportionately 

 scarce, but whether this is due to the antipathy of 

 the birds for each other's society, or the absence of 

 some favourite food, or necessity of actual existence, 

 we are not exactly prepared to say. Cover of some 

 kind is most essential to this unobtrusive and 

 skulking bird. It delights in thickets, the tangled 

 underwood in plantations and shrubberies, fruit 

 gardens, orchards, dense hedges, and the interlaced 

 vegetation growing near to streams. As in the 

 Blackcap, the male Garden Warblers appear to 

 migrate a few days in advance of the females ; and 

 with their advent song commences. The Garden 

 Warbler is of a most retiring nature, delighting to 

 thread its way through the tangled branches with 

 mouse-like celerity, every now and then indicating 

 its whereabouts by uttering a harsh teck, or less 

 frequently by bursting into song. On rarer occa- 

 sions it may be seen amongst more open situations, 

 sometimes at a considerable height in the trees, 

 whence it now and then soars into the air to capture 

 an insect ; but our experience of this species invari- 



