REED-WARBLER. 27 



comes and goes with the other memhers of the family of 

 Warblers. I have had large experience of its habits in 

 other places, and have usually found it breeding in the 

 outside portions of reed-beds, though sometimes in a 

 willow-fork, the nests being almost entirely of fine grass, 

 the flowering tops much used, the lining the finest, 

 sometimes intermixed with a little moss and wool ; they 

 are usually one or two feet above the water level. The 

 Cuckoo very often la^'s its eggs in the nests of the Eeed- 

 Warbler, though they are so deep and narrow that I 

 think its bill must be used for the purpose of deposit. 

 The normal number of eggs is four. 



SEDGE-WARBLEE. 



AcRocEPHALUs PHRAGMiTis (Beclistein) . 



A summer migrant ; arriving the last week in April 

 or the first in May, and leaving in September. It is 

 one of the best known of the Warblers, and from its 

 habit of singing almost the night through, and from its 

 imitative powers, in many places gets called the Nightin- 

 gale, and in others the mock Nightingale, or the mock- 

 ing-bird. It is indeed a wonderful mimic, but its habit 

 of mixing up its own song with that of the birds it is 

 imitating always discovers the true performer. Mr. 

 Thomas Garnett has some notes on this subject in the 

 Magazine of Natural History for 1832 and 1834, which 

 are worth reproducing. He says, " I have heard it 

 imitate in succession (intermixed with its own note of 

 cliur cJiitr) the Swallow, the House-Martin, the Green- 

 finch, the Chaffinch, the Lesser Eedpole, the House- 

 Sparrow, the Eedstart, the Willow- Wren, the Whinchat, 

 the Pied Wagtail, and the Spring Wagtail ; yet its 



