310 ENGLISH BIRD LIFE 



This warbler is a summer visitor reaching Eng- 

 land towards the end of April and departing in 

 September. It occurs throughout the three king- 

 doms, but irregularly distributed, and is found 

 onlv in a few suitable localities in each county. On 

 the Continent it is also unequally distributed, being 

 fairly jDlentiful in some countries and practically 

 unknown in others. 



Owing to its extreme reticence, the Grasshopper 

 Warbler is constantly overlooked, and if it were 

 not for its curious note one might live for years in 

 its most favoured haunts without becoming aware 

 of its existence. But as one wanders by the fen or 

 gorse-strewn waste, a small grasshopper-like chirp, 

 incessantly repeated, falls upon the ear; now- 

 sounding close at hand, and in a moment growing 

 faint as from a distance. The sound has so much 

 of the quality of an insect's cry that in places where 

 grasshoppers and mole-crickets abound it may 

 easily be passed by unheeded, and even when 

 suspicion is aroused one may look narrowly and 

 long before a glimpse of the bird, furtively moving 

 in the deeps of the thicket, can be obtained. 



Gilbert White, writing to Pennant in 1768, 

 describes its movements as follows : — " Had I not 

 been a little acquainted with insects, and know 

 that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched, I 

 should have hardly believed but that it had been a 

 Locusta whispering in the bushes. The country 

 people laugh when you tell them that it is the note 

 of a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in 

 the thickest part of the bush, and will sing at a 

 yard distant provided it be concealed. I was 



