River- Warblers. 6 1 



and gentler, and utters, by way of song, a long 

 crooning soliloquy, in accents not sweet, but much 

 less harsh and declamatory than those of his 

 cousin. I have listened to him for half-an-hour 

 together among the bushes that border the reed- 

 bed, and have fancied that his warble suits well 

 with the gentle flow of the water, and the low 

 hum of the insects around me. He will sit for a 

 long time singing on the same twig, while his 

 partner is on her nest in the reeds below ; but the 

 Sedge-warbler, in this and other respects like a 

 fidgety and ill-trained child, is never in one place, 

 or in the same vein of song, for more than a 

 minute at a time. 



It is amusing to stand and listen to the two 

 voices going on at the same time ; the Sedge-bird 

 rattling along in a state of the intensest excite- 

 ment, pitching up his voice into a series of loud 

 squeaks, and then dropping it into a long-drawn 

 grating noise, like the winding-up of an old- 

 fashioned watch, while the Reed-warbler, unaf- 

 fected by all this volubility, takes his own line in 

 a continued prattle of gentle content and self- 

 sufficiency. 



