GRASSHOPPER CHIRPf^R. 403 



at an hundred yards distance ; and, when close at your ear, is 

 scarce any louder than when a great way off. Had I not been 

 a little acquainted with insects, and known that the Grasshop- 

 per 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 the most artful creature, skulking in the thickest 

 part of a bush, and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be 

 concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the other 

 side of the hedge where it haunted ; and then it would run, creep- 

 ing like a mouse before us for an hundred yards together, through 

 the bottom of the thorns, yet it would not come into fair sight; 

 but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the 

 top of a twig, gaping, and shivering with its wings." 



Mr Weir, from a pair snared by whom I have taken the 

 above description of the species, has favoured me with the fol- 

 lowing account of this interesting bird. " The Grasshopper 

 Warblers are very seldom seen, for they artfully conceal them- 

 selves amongst furze bushes, or in the thickest brakes and 

 hedges, from which it is very difficult to pvit them out. In 

 the dusk of a warm and still summer's evening they make a 

 lengthened grinding and hissing noise. About the beginning 

 of June 1835, whilst I was watching at the back of an old wall 

 upon the property of W. D. Gillon, Esq. of Wallhouse, near 

 the top of Bathgate Hills, a pair of Stonechats feeding their 

 young, I observed a little bird which I had never before seen 

 rise in the air again and again in the pursuit of flies. I im- 

 mediately ran to the spot to get a nearer view of it, and after a 

 good deal of searching at length discovered its nest. It was 

 placed in the middle of a clump of very thick whins, and com- 

 pletely overhung by their prickly branches. So cunningly 

 was it concealed that I was obliged to beat the female out of it 

 several times before I could find it out. It was composed of 

 coarse dried grass, and had in it six beautiful white eggs closely 

 freckled with carnation spots. I caught the birds with much 

 difficulty in a trap-cage when their young were nearly ripe." 

 The nest was rather bulky, but firmly put together, and was 

 composed of stems and blades of dried grass, the interior of 



