26 BIRDS OF LANCASHIRE. 



immediately begins to utter her " sorrowing " note, and 

 a careful watch of a quarter of an hour or so will 

 generally suffice to see her back to it. The number of 

 eggs is six, sometimes seven, and they are laid during 

 the last three weeks of May. 



GENUS ACROCEPHALUS. 

 EEED-WAEBLER. 



AcROCEPHALUS STREPERUS (Vicillot). 



A summer visitor, but rare and local ; swamps and 

 reed-beds, such as it frequents during the breeding- 

 season, being few and far between in Lancashire. Mr. 

 J. F. Brockholes {Nat. Scrap Book, pt. 8) says he has 

 known the nest in a reedy ditch between the Maghull 

 railway station and Sefton meadows, and, from hearsa}^ 

 that the bird sometimes occurs in the osier beds around 

 Warrington. In his " Harmonia Ruralis," 1794, Bolton 

 writes that he has had birds sent him shot on the river 

 Roch, but it is rarely seen now in the Bury district. 

 Mr. W. Peterkin has known of its nesting near Man- 

 chester, and Mr. David Mitchell near Morecambe, and 

 Mr. E. Standen thinks a pair or two annually visit the 

 Goosnargh district, he having in June, 1878, found two 

 nests there. Seven or eight years ago, Mr. Louis H. 

 Simpson tells me a nest was taken near Preston in June 

 by Mr. Richard Sharpies, and I have seen the eggs in 

 the former gentleman's collection. The nest was in a 

 privet hedge which divided Mr. Sharpies' garden from a 

 small stream, and was a good height up. Elsewhere, I 

 have no notices of its presence, nor am I furnished with 

 any dates af migration, but the probability is that it 



