90 GRASSHOPPER-WARBLER. 



is not improbable tliat it may often be overlooked. In Italy it is 

 said to be rare ; but in the south of Spain I found it fairly abundant 

 in autumn and winter ; and in the latter season it appears to visit 

 Morocco and Algeria. Eastward, it can be traced in Europe to 

 Transylvania, and the south-east of Russia ; perhaps to the Altai, in 

 Siberia ; but beyond the Ural Mountains its line is crossed by 

 allied species : — Z. lanceolata in Siberia, and Z. straminea in 

 Turkestan. 



The nest may be looked for in clumps of dry fen-grass, the 

 bottoms and sides of thick hedge-rows, rank herbage on hill-sides, 

 or in young plantations. When flushed from her nest the bird 

 flies off with a very peculiar drooping movement of her outspread 

 tail, and, if not pursued, she will usually not fly far. On her 

 return she will sometimes come stealing back again with the 

 mouse-like action so often insisted upon as a characteristic, but 

 neither Mr. A. H. Evans nor I have noticed this performance on 

 her leaving the nest. This, a compact and rather deep structure, 

 is principally composed of moss and dry grass, with a finer lining 

 of the latter ; the 5-7 eggs are pale pinkish-white, freckled and 

 zoned with darker reddish-brown : measurements 7 by "54 in. 

 Two broods are sometimes reared in the season ; the first eggs being 

 laid about the third week in May ; while they have been taken fresh 

 in the first week of August. The song, already described, may be 

 heard to advantage on a still summer's evening, or during the two or 

 three hours after dawn ; the bird perching on the topmost spray of 

 a bush or the point of a tall reed to utter it, but taking refuge in the 

 herbage on the smallest alarm, although perhaps only for a moment. 

 The alarm-note is a sharp tic, tic, tac. The food consists of dragon- 

 flies — taken on the wing — and other insects, with their larvae. This 

 species appears to migrate in large parties, for Booth observed several 

 hundreds at daybreak early in May, all congregated on a small patch 

 of some dozen or twenty acres of mud-banks covered with marsh- 

 samphire and other weeds, near Rye in Sussex, and evidently making 

 their way inland. 



The adult is greenish-brown above, with darker striations down the 

 centre of each feather ; quills and tail brown, with faint bars on the 

 latter ; under parts pale brown, with darker spots on the neck and 

 breast ; under tail-coverts very long, and streaked along the shafts 

 with dark brown ; bill brown ; legs and feet pale yellowish-brown. 

 Length 5-4 in.; wing to tip of 3rd and longest quill 2-4 in. The 

 sexes are alike in plumage. The young are more suffused with buff 

 on the under parts, and have larger bastard primaries. 



