374 BRITISH BIRDS. 
the belly. Bill dark brown above, pale beneath; legs, feet, and claws 
slaty brown; irides brown. After the autumn moult the rufous colours of 
the upper and underparts are more pronounced. The nearest ally to the 
Reed-Warbler is undoubtedly the Marsh-Warbler, from which it is very 
difficult to distinguish it, except when freshly moulted. It has also three 
other very near allies—A.dumetorum and A. agricola in the Eastern Pale- 
arctic and Oriental Regions, and A. beticatus in the South Ethiopian Region ; 
but these species, as might readily be anticipated in birds whose migrations 
extend over so much smaller an area, have much more rounded wings, the 
second primary being always shorter than the fifth. In the more pointed- 
winged species it is sometimes nearly as long as the third, and never much 
shorter than the fourth. 
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REED-WARBLER’S NEST. 
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