BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 87 



common, discharging his brief song at intervals — 

 a sound as of shattering glass. The whinchat 

 was rarely seen, but I constantly met the small, 

 prettily coloured stonechat flitting from bush to 

 bush, following me, and never ceasing his low, 

 querulous tacking chirp, anxious for the safety 

 of his nest. Nightingales, blackcaps and white- 

 throats also nested there, and were louder and 

 more emphatic in their protests when approached. 

 There were several grasshopper-warblers on the 

 common, all, very curiously as it seemed to me, 

 clustered at one spot, so that one could ramble 

 over miles of ground without hearing their singu- 

 lar note; but on approaching the place they in- 

 habited one gradually became conscious of a 

 mysterious trilling buzz or whirr, low at first and 

 growing louder and more stridulous, until the 

 hidden singers were left behind, when by degrees 

 it sank lower and lower again, and ceased to be 

 audible at a distance of about one hundred yards 

 from the points where it had sounded loudest. 

 The birds hid in clumps of furze and bramble 

 so near together that the area covered by the 

 buzzing sound measured about two hundred yards 

 across. This most singular sound (for a warbler 



