42 The Oologists' Record, June i, 1921. 



see/ but one occasionally gets a fleeting glimpse of a nightingale- 

 like bird. I know of no bird that is more difficult to get a good view 

 of, let alone shoot, if one is minded to obtain a specimen. All nests 

 I have found have been in brambles or thorny creeper, sometimes 

 intermingled with dead rush, growing on the side of, or actually 

 over, some running water. The nest is not easy to find, for the 

 simple reason that the thickets which this species frequents are often 

 so dense and thorny as to be almost impenetrable. My solution of 

 the difficulty was to wear my oldest, but most thorn -proof, clothes, 

 gaiters and gloves, and carry a big hunting knife, to slash my way 

 through the matted brambles. At the same time T slowly struggled 

 along the bed of a 2-foot wide rivulet which ran through a dense 

 wood of alder, etc., growing in very damp ground. I only came 

 across two new nests on this particular day (12th May). I found 

 first an old nest of what I presumed to be a Cetti's Warbler, and this 

 was supported on bramble growing over the rivulet and gave me the 

 necessary clue as to what to look for. Shortly afterwards I came 

 on the two new nests one after the other, and about 100 yards apart. 

 In each case the nests were perfectly easy to see when I had hacked 

 my way within say, 10 feet distance of them. The first nest was 

 supported in dead rushes and brambles, and was actually right over 

 the centre of the rivulet, and about 4 feet from the surface of the 

 water. The other was in bare thorny creeper falling from an over- 

 hanging tree, and was on the very edge of the rivulet, and again 

 about 4 feet up. In this case the cock bird gave the show away b}^ 

 singing from near its nest, so all I had to do was to pay particular 

 attention to the place where I thought the song came from. The 

 first nest contained four nearly hatched eggs and the second three 

 considerably incubated ones. The nests were made of marsh grasses 

 lined with finer grasses, and a little piece of cotton grass here and 

 there. They were fairly deep and moderately neat. The only' 

 other new nest I have ever come across was in bramble growing 

 beside tamarisk, on the banks of the River Guadalquivir below 

 Seville, and this contained three highly incubated eggs on 22nd May. 

 From my limited experience of this species I should say that the 

 proper time for fresh eggs in Southern Spain is normally the first 

 week of May, if not the last week of April. Four is the usual 

 complement, three not unUsual, and five I have not met with, 

 but understand it is not rare. [In " Aves de Espafia," Arevalo 

 y Baca, we find it stated that the bird lays " cuatro huevos a lo 



