2 8 The Oologists' Record^ June i, 1921. 



followed by a list of building materials, etc. ; this is getting warmer, 

 but at any rate for Palestine the real essential description seems to 

 be omitted. As I have only found the nest of this species in that 

 country I am not qualified to generalise on the subject. If I were 

 asked to furnish information which would materially help in the 

 search for these nests I would tell my questioner to go to marshy 

 areas where these birds were abundant, and they would soon be identi- 

 fied by their peculiar, noisy habits, and by the incessant " teck," 

 " teck," " teck," uttered during their jerky flight. These birds 

 are extraordinarily bold in visiting their nests either during con- 

 struction or for the purpose of feeding the bird incubating the 

 €ggs, even when an intruder is only a few yards away. Now for 

 the nests, what is one to look for ? Do not expect the fairly obvious 

 globe or oval of fine dead grasses of Prinia gracilis — nor yet the 

 solid cup of Acrocephalus streperus, nor even the neater and softer 

 cup of Hippolais pallida — in fact don't look for a nest such as one 

 usually expects to find ! You must look for something in the nature 

 of the gossamer home of a large spider, or the elongated, sausage- 

 shaped web of a host of caterpillars — and of course this is not placed 

 conspicuously in the open, but concealed in the centre of thick grass, 

 often not 2 feet above the ground, and the outside of the nest is 

 thickly woven to a regular screen of grass blades. The length or 

 depth of the nest is generally 4 to 5 inches and the diameter 2 

 to 3 inches at the egg chamber, which cjuickly narrows till at the 

 top there is an entrance hole just large enough to admit the parent 

 bird — and this narrowing at the top draws the tips of the grass 

 stems together and forms a little screen or shelter which helps to 

 conceal the entrance. There is therefore no resemblance whatever 

 to the ordinary forms of nest and unless one knows where to look 

 and what to find, there is every possibility of passing by these 

 gossamer-knit structures. The principal nest material is the white 

 vegetable down of aquatic grasses beautifully interwoven and 

 fastened to the growing grass stems — the egg-chamber has also 

 some fine dead grasses in the lining, and one invariably has to 

 destroy the nest to obtain the eggs — while a satisfactory photo- 

 graph is quite out of the question. With two exceptions I found 

 all nests in thick grass, not more than a few feet high, growing in 

 water and never higher than 3 feet above the ground, and even 

 this height was unusual. I found well over a dozen nests and they 

 were either at the edge of extensive marshy areas, or in the grass 



