GRASSHOPPER WARBLER. 29 



observe on account of its very retired and skuUving 

 habits, threading its way through the grass as it 

 hurries away, very much as the corncrake does — in 

 fact, Yarell tells us, it creeps along more like a mouse 

 than a bird. Its note, for it can scarcely be called a 

 song, very closely resembles the note of the Grass- 

 hopper, a long trill continued on the same note, and 

 lasting sometimes two or three minutes. It feeds 

 chiefly on insects and small snails. 



You will be lucky indeed if you are fortunate to find 

 the nest of this scarce bird, for it is so cunningly con- 

 cealed that it has sometimes given infinite trouble 

 to discover its whereabouts ; then again, if the bird 

 is disturbed from her nest, she seldom flies up, but 

 drops quietly ofl^ and hurries away mouse-like, thread- 

 ing her way through the tufts of long grass, leaving 

 you to find her eggs if you can. I was fortunate to 

 get possession of a clutch of five in May, 1894, 

 the only ones that I have heard of in our county 

 lately. They were brought to me by a keeper. 

 He did not know what they were, and together we 

 went and visited the nest from which he had taken 

 them. We found it in a thicket, placed on the 

 ground and hidden securely away beneath a tuft of 

 tangled grass over which brambles grew, thickly 

 twined and matted together. It was large for the 

 size of the eggs, rather loosely put together, and made 

 chiefly of grass, into which a little moss was woven 

 on the outside. The eggs were pinkish white in 

 ground colour, thickly spotted over with small carna- 

 tion brown spots, rather more profuse towards the 

 larger end of the egg. Two of the eggs had some 

 small thin dark-brown hair lines on them, similar to 

 those one often sees on the eggs of the Sedge Warbler. 



