370 SYLVITD/E. 



bird to vvliicli they belonged*. In 1802 the species was 

 admitted l)y Montagu to his ' Ornithological Dictionary,' 

 and said to have been also found by him along the coasts of 

 Kent and Sussex from Sandwich to Arundel. 



The Reed- Warbler comes to this country late in April 

 and leaves us in September. Like many others of our 

 summer-migrants, it is more common on the eastern than 

 on the western side of England, and it seems not to breed 

 in Devon or Cornwall ; in the last county, indeed, it is only 

 known with certainty to have occurred as a straggler, and that 

 but once, in the autumn of 1849, when several were taken in 

 Scilly. According to the latest information collected and 

 kindly furnished by Mr. More, it is doubtful whether the Reed- 

 Warbler regularly extends further to the north-west than 

 Staffordshire + or Derbyshire, though it. reaches Scarborough 

 on the east. In Scotland it has been found breeding in East 

 Lothian by Mr. Hepburn, and in West Lothian by Mr. Weir. 

 In Ireland one is said to have been seen by Templeton near 

 Belfast, and a male was shot by Mr. Montgomery at Raheny, 

 near Dublin, December 21st, 1843 — the date shewing that 

 the bird must have been a vagrant. The range of the 

 species, therefore, in the British Islands is much less wide 

 than that of the Sedge- Warbler, next to be described, 

 and it is far more local and generally scarcer where 

 it does occur than that bird. Though reed-beds form its 

 chief haunts, they are not its only resort, for it is not unfre- 

 quently found, and it even breeds, in places at some distance 

 from any such growth, or from water itself. Yet its par- 

 tiality for reeds, where they exist, and the habit it has, in 

 common with its larger congener, of usually suspending its 

 remarkable nest among their stems make the names of 

 Reed-bird or Reed- Wren, by which it is commonly known, 



* As Lightfoot observes, the bird, nest and eggs had been figured in Sepp's 

 ' Nederlandsche Vogelen,' but the two last were therein attributed to the 

 Greater Whitethroat, which is represented as their owner, while the Reed-Wren 

 is accredited with eggs that certainly do not belong to it. 



+ Messrs. Armitage and Ley, however, state (Trans. Woolhope Club, 1869, 

 p. 73) that in Herefordshire the Reed-Wren is only .sieen in the northern and 

 eastern portions of that county. 



