PASSE RES. { 68 ) SYLVIIDJE, 



THE CHIFFCHAFF. 



LESSER PETTYCHAPS, LESSER WILLOW WREN, 

 LEAST WILLOW WREN. 



Pliylloscopus collyhita. 



Ye curious chanters of f fie wood, 

 That vtter forth Dame Nature s lays. 



Sir Henry Wotton, b. 1568. 



Selby, in his " Eeport on the Ornithology of Berwick- 

 shire and district within the limits of the Berwickshire 

 Naturalists' Club," ^ mentions the Chiffchaff as " among the 

 rarer species " and " not common," On the 23rd of April 

 1874, Mr. Hardy, Oldcambus, records it as frequenting the 

 tall young larches in the Pease Dean, and as " a bird never 

 observed before in this vicinity." ^ In the beginning of May 



1878, my friend, Mr. Arthur H. Evans, of Cambridge, while 

 staying with me here, recognised the note of this species 

 in the Old Heronry Wood at Paxton, and a week or two 

 afterwards — on the 22nd of May — I heard the bird uttering 

 its peculiar cry at the top of a high elm tree near the Avenue 

 Bridge, and, after watching some time, had the satisfaction 

 of seeing it come out of the middle of the tree and alight 

 on a branch close to the spot where I stood. I had not 

 previously observed it at Paxton. On the 22nd of June 



1879, Mr. George Bolam discovered a nest of this bird in 



1 This Report was written in 1841. See Hist. Ber. Nat. Club, vol. i. p. 252. 

 -' Ibid. vol. vii. p. 28(t, 



