THE SEDGE WARBLER 



ACROCEPHALUS PHRAGMITIS 



It seems scarcely credible now-a-days that such a 

 common bird as the Sedge Warbler was so little 

 known in Gilbert White's day that the old Hamp- 

 shire naturalist actually confused it with the Reed 

 Warbler. But ornithology like other sciences is a 

 progressive one, and doubtless the ornithologists of 

 a future age will regard many of the achievements of 

 present day students with as much astonishment as 

 we do those of a past generation of naturalists. The 

 Sedge Warbler is another very common and widely 

 dispersed member of the present group, and appears 

 to visit the greater part of the British Islands in 

 spring and summer for the purposes of reproduction. 

 In some parts, especially in the southern counties, it 

 literally swarms, but in the more northern districts it 

 becomes not only more local but decidedly rarer. 

 We do not find it breeding in the Shetlands, or the 

 Outer Hebrides, although it may do so in the 

 Orkneys, and certainly does so in Skye. In Ireland 



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