THE SYLVIIDJ5 OF SOLWAT. 



143 



eating rowans, and evidently enjoying the moist warmth of our 

 •westerly exposures at that period of the year. I have often 

 seen them well into November, and a female captured on 

 29th November, 1881, in a garden in Maxwelltown, where it 

 was feeding on rowan berries, is now amongst the other 

 specimens on the table. 



This species is the most frugivorous of the British Sylviid;e, 

 and so long as berries of any sort are to be got it seems to 

 prefer them to insects. But let me guard against giving any 

 countenance to the assumption that it is a berry destroyer in 

 any such sense as the charge could be maintained against the 

 Blackbird and the Thrush. 



Although personally I prefer the song of the Garden Warbler, 

 yet the full-throat«d strains that issue from this bird during 

 the first hours of daylight of a June morning are exquisite in 

 the extreme. 



V. — The Wood Warbler. 



( Phylloscop us sibilatrix. ) 



This is a bird of curiously irregular distribution. ^Vhere it 

 is found it is usually fairly common, and it appears to be 

 confined to Oak or Spruce plantations or their immediate 

 vicinity. And yet all Oak and Spruce woods do not harbour 

 it, for I know many where it is not found. With us in Solway 

 it occupies a rather narrow belt of country in contiguity to the 

 bare hillside or sheep-farm districts. Outside of this particular 

 locality it is in rather isolated colonies, mostly in wooded glens 

 of the small streams. 



Twenty years and more ago I used to find it pretty regularly 

 within a radius of a few miles from Dumfries. Then it wholly 

 disappeared, and only within three or four years has it returned 

 in scanty instances to its old haunts. 



It is a pretty and lively, but not at all obtrusive, species. 

 The most distinctive feature of its voice is the long-drawn trill 

 which it emits at the end of its song. Some small boys of my 

 acquaintance, who are possessed of sufficiently high-pitched vocal 

 powers, can imitate this striking, thrilling sound to perfection. 

 The nest is said never to be feather-lined, but, apart from this, 

 its densely small purple-spotted eggs are unmistakable, and not 

 to be confounded with any other British species. 



