THE



265



Avicultural Magazine,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF

THE AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.


Third Series .—Vol. VII.—No. 10. —All rights reserved. AUGUST, 1916.



THE LESSER WHITETHROAT.


Sylvia curruca.


By Dr. A. G. Butler.


Early this year I heard a note in my garden which was

familiar to me, but which I could not recognize as that of one of

the usual frequenters of my home. I occasionally caught sight of

a tiny bird at some distance which evidently produced a monoto¬

nous little song and later my son spoke of a small warbler which

had strayed into his greenhouse and which he had released but

which he had failed to recognize as a habitual frequenter of gardens.


On June 22nd while the gardener was trimming and cutting

in the hawthorn hedges which screen one end of my rose-beds, he

discovered a small nest near the top and at the end of one of the

hedges in which a honeysuckle is intertwined, and he informed me

that he had found a grey-tit’s nest with young in the hedge. I told

him that, unless it was a long-tailed tit it would not build in the

hedge, but in a hole, and he replied that the parent birds had rather

long tails.


Of course I proceeded to investigate ; the nest was about

seven feet from the ground and very small. Of course I saw at a

glance that it was no tit’s nest, whereupon my gardener suggested

that perhaps it was a hedge-sparrow’s! “No” I said “a hedge-

sparrow builds a nest often as large as that of a greenfinch, get me

the steps and I will tell you in a minute what it is.” As soon as I

was able to look down upon it I recognized it at once as that of

the lesser whitethroat, and of course the alarm-note kek, kek, kek

which sounded in the neighbouring trees was explained.



