402 ^ SIBILATRIX LOCUSTELLA. 



much resembles the other sex ; is so shy as to be obtained with 

 difficulty. On the eighteenth of May we found the nest of this 

 bird in a patch of thick brambles and furze, with two eggs ; 

 but as they had not been incubated, probably more would have 

 been laid. The nest is of a flimsy texture, like that of the 

 Whitethroat, composed of dried stalks and goose-grass, lined 

 with fibrous roots. The eggs are of a spotless bluish-white, 

 weighing twenty-one grains. From the scarcity of the bird, 

 and the artful manner in which it conceals its nest, it is rarely 

 found ; nor has any author noticed it." 



Mr Selby, besides repeating some of the above particulars, 

 informs us that he has known it " for some years past, as a 

 visitant to several parts of Northumberland, where it haunts 

 low and damp situations, overgrown with furze, bramble and 

 underwood." " The nest," he says, " is composed of moss, 

 and the dried stems of the ladies' bed-straw (Galium), and 

 bears a great resemblance to that of the Pettychaps, or the 

 White-throat, though it is thicker, and more compact in tex- 

 ture. The eggs are four or five in number, of a pinkish-grey, 

 with numerous specks of a deeper tint. The young, when dis- 

 turbed, immediately quit the nest, although but half-fledged, 

 trusting, doubtless, to their instinctive power of concealment." 



It is probable that Montagu had mistaken the eggs of some 

 other bird for those of the Grasshopper Chirper, for all other 

 observers have described the latter as spotted, although they 

 differ in their account of the tint of their markings. Mr 

 Yarrell in Mr Jenyns's British Vertebrate Animals, has de- 

 scribed the egg as " pale reddish- white, speckled all over with 

 darker red-brown : long. diam. eight lines ; trans, diam. six 

 lines." In his beautifully illustrated and carefully composed 

 " History of British Birds," he has the following statement : — 

 " This bird sometimes lays as many as seven eggs, eight lines 

 long by six lines in breadth, of a pale reddish- white colour, 

 freckled all over with specks of darker red. I have seen five 

 or six sets of the eggs of the Grasshopper Warbler which did 

 not differ either in colour or marks." 



" Nothing," says White, " can be more amusing than the 

 whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by, though 



