GARDEN-WARBLER 



495 



forsake their nursery, even when incubation is well advanced. Like 

 other warblers, blackcaps depend in autumn largel}' upon berries for 

 their food, and wholly so when they linger till winter. Dry grass 

 mingled with some moss forms the main element in the nest, which 

 is sparsely lined with hair, and may be decorated externally with 

 spiders' web. Bushes or other thick covert, or sometimes the lower 

 branches of trees growing amid underwood, form the general nesting- 

 site. As usual among warblers, from four to six is the number of eggs 

 in a clutch ; but these are so variable in colouring and marking as to 

 defy description within our available limits, although it may be stated 

 that various shades of olive and olive-brown are the prevailing tints in 

 the ordinary type, the markings taking the form of blotches and smears. 



Garden-Warbler 



(Sylvia hortensis). 



The garden- warbler is a bird somewhat unfortunate 

 in the matter of names. In the first place, it has 

 no more claim to the distinctive title of " garden " 

 {hortensis) than has the whitethroat or the blackcap ; and, secondly, 

 by many writers the long- 

 established title of Sj'h'ia 

 hortensis has been discarded 

 in favour of .S". salicaria or 

 S. simplex. The last of 

 these, which has apparently 

 the right of priority, is the 

 one now generally emplo}-ed, 

 but it is even more unsatis- 

 factory than the familiar 

 Jiortensis. 



Without any very ob- 

 vious distinctive mark, the 

 garden-warbler, which is a 



soberly coloured bird, agrees with the whitethroat in having the first 

 primary quill shorter than the overlying covert. The present species 

 (of which the two sexes are alike in colouring) is distinguished, 

 however, by the general uniform olive-brown upper-parts, the presence 

 of a buff eyebrow-stripe, and a buff tinge on the throat, sides of the 

 breast, and flanks, contrasting sharpl}' with the pure white of the 

 middle of the breast and the whole of the abdomen. Immediately 

 after the autumn-moult the colours are brighter than at other times, the 

 upper-parts being russet-brown, while a reddish tinge suffuses the buff 

 of the under-parts, thereby rendering the contrast with the white area 



RD STUDIOS 



GARUEN-WAKBLEK, 



