2o6 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



"No more rare birds this season!" I said and turned 

 homewards; but in Gloucestershire I found a man who 

 told me of a colony of the marsh warbler, a rarity I had 

 not counted on meeting; better still, he took me to it, 

 although he wished me to understand that it was his 

 colony, his own discovery, also that he had been making 

 a good thing out of it. He left me on the spot to 

 experience that rarest delight of the bird-seeker, the 

 making the acquaintance, and growing hourly and daily 

 more intimate with, a new species. In this instance it 

 was nothing but a plain little brown bird, plainer than 

 the nightingale and hardly to be distinguished, even in 

 the hand, from the familiar reed warbler, but in virtue 

 of its melody of a lustre surpassing our blue kingfisher 

 or indeed any shining bird of the tropics. 



The colony was in a withy bed of a year's growth, 

 the plants being three or four feet high, the whole 

 ground being covered with a dense growth of tall grasses 

 and sedges, meadow-sweet, comfrey, and nettles. It was 

 moist and boggy in places but without water, except in 

 one small pool which served as a drinking and bathing 

 place to all the small birds in the vicinity. 



Sitting on a mound a few feet above the surface I 

 could survey the whole field of seven to eight acres 

 enclosed by high hedges and old hedgerow elm and oak 

 trees on three sides, with a row of pollarded willows 

 on the other, and I was able to make out about nine 

 pairs of marsh warblers in the colony. It was easy 

 to count them, as each couple had its own territory, 

 and the males were conspicuous as they were constantly 



