The Sedge-Warbler. 117 



not always strictly confined to sedges and reeds, it is almost invariably to be 

 found in the neigbbourhood of water ; * thus in Kent I met with it in numbers 

 in a plantation which was frequently converted into a marsh by the overflow of a 

 mill-stream, and in Norfolk, in lanes within a stone's-throw of the broads. With- 

 out question the best and most likely situations in which to look for the nest are 

 in reeds and sedges, or in willows or hawthorns overhanging the water: and here 

 I feel constrained to contradict a statement which has been made, respecting the 

 situation of the nest, by several excellent observers and well-known Ornithologists. 

 Seebohm and others assert that the nest of this bird "is never suspended between 

 the reeds like the Reed- Warbler's, but is supported by the branches"; j^et of the 

 many nests which I took on the Ormesby broads in 1885 and 1886, nearly all 

 were suspended precisel}' like those of the Reed- Warbler, several reeds being 

 interwoven loosely into the walls of the nest, which was placed above the junction 

 of a leaf in at least one of the said reeds. As seen from our boat, it would have 

 puzzled the keenest observer to say to which species the suspended nest belonged, 

 though a glance at the eggs at once settled the question. Of course when taken and 

 compared side by side, that of the Sedge- Warbler is seen to be wider and shallower. 



Sometimes the nest is built in a hawthorn hedge, sometimes in nettles at the 

 foot of a hedge ; and all those which I have discovered in the marsh}^ plantation 

 (part of which, when under water, was converted into a thousand tiny islets formed 

 by the roots, and was most awkward to cross) were built amongst brambles, 

 precisely in such a situation as would be chosen by the Garden- Warbler. 



For many years I collected eggs, without troubling to take the nests, but 

 eventually the importance of studying the variation of nests as well as eggs 

 became impressed upon me, and during the few years in which I acted upon this 

 conviction, I obtained amongst others some thirty or forty nests of the present 

 species, from which I was able to select eleven fairly well-defined distinct types 

 for my permanent collection, and an extremely pretty series they make, varying 

 from a stoutly built structure of twigs, grass-stalks, feathers, wool, horsehair, and 

 fibre, fully an inch and a half thick, to the flimsiest little fabric of goose-grass, 

 fibre, wool, and the flowering heads of reeds : some nests seem to be made 

 entirely of fine grass-stems, and much resemble those of the Greater Whitethroat, 

 others are more like those of the Blackcap, and others again are almost Sparrow- 

 like in their untidiness and in the cai'eless use of white feathers in the walls, 

 though scarcely so in form.f 



* I have taken the nest as far as a hundred }-ards or more distant from water. 



t I have a nest of the House-Sparrow taken from a Sand-Martin's burrow which is uot much unlike 

 this type, eveu in form. 



