WARBLER 1 02 1 



by its different song, and comparatively seldom does it stray from 

 the reed-beds which are its favourite haunts. In them usually it 

 builds one of the most beautiful of nests, made of the seed-branches 

 of the reed and long grass, wound horizontally round and round so 

 as to include in its substance the living stems of three or four reeds, 

 between which it is suspended at a convenient height above the 

 water, and the structure is so deep that the eggs do not roll out 

 when its props are shaken by the wind.^ Of very similar habits is 

 the Eeed-Thrush or great Reed-Warbler, A. arundinaceus, a loud- 

 voiced species, abundant on the Continent but very rarely straying 

 to England. Much interest also attaches to the species known in 

 books as Savi's Warbler, Potamodus luscinioides, which was only 

 recognized as a constant inhabitant of the Fen-district of England 

 a few years before its haunts were destroyed by drainage. No 

 example seems to have been obtained in this country since 1856. 

 Its nest is peculiar, placed on the ground and formed of the blades 

 of Glyceria so skilfully entwined as to be a very permanent struc- 

 ture, and it is a curious fact that its nests were well known to the 

 sedge-cutters of the district which it most frequented, as those of a 

 bird with which they were unacquainted, long before the builder 

 was recognized by naturalists.^ In coloration the bird somewhat 

 resembles a Nightingale (whence its specific name), and its song 

 differs from that of any of those before mentioned, being a long 

 smooth trill, pitched higher but possessing more tone than that of the 

 Grasshopper- Warbler, Locustella na3via, which is a widely-distributed 

 species throughout the British Isles, not only limited to marshy 

 sites, but affecting also dry soils, inhabiting indifferently many 

 kinds of places where there is tangled and thick herbage, heather 

 or brushwood.^ The precise determination of this bird — the Grass- 

 hopper-Lark, as it was long called in books, though its notes if once 

 heard can never be mistaken for those of a grasshopper or cricket, 

 and it has no affinity to the Larks — as an English species is due to 

 the discernment of Gilbert White in 1768. In its habits it is one 

 of the most retiring of birds, keeping in the closest shelter, so that 

 it may be within a very short distance. of an eager naturalist without 

 his being able to see it, — the olive-colour, streaked with dark brown, 

 of its upper plumage helping to make it invisible. The nest is 

 very artfully concealed in the thickest herbage. The foreign 



^ Of late years the nearly-allied Marsh-Warbler, A. palustris, is said to 

 have been recognized in several parts of England, but I have not seen a specimen 

 obtained in this country or had the good fortune knowingly to hear its song, which 

 all agree in saying is very different from that of the Reed-Wren. 



- See Yarrell, Br. B. ed. 4, i. pp. 389-397, where the history of the species 

 was first told. 



^ In those parts of England where each of the two species last mentioned was 

 formerly most abundant it was known as the Reel-bird or Eeeler (p. 779). 



