tHE OLD DECOY, EASTBOURNE:- 89 
with reddish flecks, but these, which are supposed to be laid by birds that 
return to the same spot every year, though a very beautiful variety, are far 
less typical than the pale brown egg. What always strikes one about sub- 
sequent Nightingales’ nests is the ease with which they can be found. How 
was it, we wonder, that I never got one before? The fact is, finding them is 
less a matter of keen sight than experience. The novice is nowhere beside 
the old hand. But in any case it was a tiring job bending in the search, and 
one gladly returned after it to the heap of cut sedge and wood shavings that 
used to lie beside a tumble-down shanty on the eastern edge of the Decoy. 
It was a likely spot for a Creeper’s nest, or, later on in the season, for 
a Flycatcher’s. Here one could listen to the soft note of the Cuckoos, which 
could here have had little difficulty in discovering a suitable resting place 
for their eggs. Ten feet up yon fir tree a Wood-Pigeon is sitting on her 
snow-white eggs, and a Sparrowhawk’s eggs have been taken quite un- 
expectedly from a nest no farther from the ground. 
I was always on the look-out for two birds which ought to have been 
present—the Grasshopper and the Marsh-Warbler. The former one could hardly 
have overlooked, owing to its striking note, but, though some of the tussocks 
would have formed an admirable receptacle for its nest, I looked in vain for it 
year after year. Breeding later, as the Marsh-Warbler does, it may well have 
escaped observation, owing to the density of the foliage after the month of 
May; moreover, I am unacquainted with its note, which would probably be 
the only means of recognizing it. 
We once worked up a fine flutter of excitement over a pseudo-Orphean’s 
nest. A curious damaged egg was brought me by a boy, who had taken 
it with two others from the Decoy. Ignorant of their value, he had been 
induced to exchange these latter—on paper a very bad bargain—with a local 
naturalist, who afterwards proclaimed them the eggs of an Orphean Warbler. 
The man affirmed that he had found the nest there himself the preceding 
spring, and was sure of their identity, for he had compared them with 
undoubted specimens at a well-known London naturalist’s, of which his shop 
was a branch. Though not much impressed by the information, I was 
sufficiently stirred by the oddness of the egg to enquire if the bird had been 
seen, and I was all excitement a few minutes later, when I heard it described 
“oreyish, with a black head and white in the tail.” Here was indeed a 
find, and I had visions of writing to the ‘ Zoologist,’ and inviting down some 
distinguished authority to study the breeding of the Orphean Warbler in England. 
The following day I was off to the Decoy with field-glasses, and, accom- 
as 
panied by the finder of the nest, who was fully persuaded that he was going 
