AXn NEIGHBOURHOOD. 123 



there I found the bird very common. I sliould say 

 that there must liave been at least six or more pairs 

 frequenting an area of perhaps twenty acres, but in 

 spite of their abundance and constant song, it Avas 

 only by close watching in the early morning that I 

 Avas able to procure specimens for my collection ; the 

 male bird at that time will now and then creep out to 

 the top of a furze bush "reeling" or singing, and if 

 undisturbed perhaps remain for a minute or more, 

 but on the slightest alarm will disappear into the 

 tliickest covert he can find, and run like a mouse 

 through the most tangled herbage from one thicket to 

 the next, never taking wing unless absolutely forced 

 to do so. In vain did we search for a nest, though, 

 armed with a bill-hook and protected by garden- 

 gloves, we plunged into masses of thorns, furze, 

 nettles, thistles, and other defensive vegetation into 

 which we had after patient watching traced one of 

 these birds, tearing up the grass by handfuls, lopping 

 away live and dead furze, on hands and knees, 

 morning, noon, and evening ; day after day we went 

 home with perforated skins, perspiring and unsuc- 

 cessful. In a very different locality, however, I once 

 had the luck to find a nest of this bird, in my school- 

 days, while searching for the nest of a Waterhen. 

 In this instance I was struggling, half wading, in an 

 overgrown tangled wet ditch, with a strong thorn 

 fence on one side and a sedgy bank on the other ; on 

 grasping a tuft of this sedge to steady myself, a bird 

 fluttered out under my hand, and I was soon aware 

 of a nest, composed entirely of sedge and grass-stalks, 

 on the ground, and completely covered above by the 

 tuft of sedge I have mentioned, the only apparent 

 access for the bird being a small passage through this 



