DARTFORD WARBLERS 13 



labours, to go rewarded, must generally attain to 

 the labours of Sisyphus. Watching the birds, 

 unless they are building or feeding young when 

 success is almost certain is all but hopeless ; 

 while assiduous search though sometimes recom- 

 pensed in and around the spot where you have 

 first seen or heard a bird or a pair previously, as 

 you imagine, undisturbed, likewise has little to 

 recommend it. For the " Dartford ' is a pro- 

 voking little beast, since, except for irr-ing, which 

 it also does religiously, even at seasons when it could 

 have no home, it will vouchsafe you no single or sure 

 indication of its nest's whereabouts. Watch this 

 male, for instance, on a day late in April or early 

 in May. First seen at a five-yard range, calling 

 excitedly, he retires thirty yards, then again thirty 

 and so on, still firr-ing, till you have quite lost 

 sight of him, and begin, moreover, to wonder what 

 on earth his game is. Naturally, from his pro- 

 clivity to meander, you can never be quite sure 

 whether he is agitated over his nest somewhere 

 round X, let us say, the point where he was first 

 interviewed ; or whether it is at Y sixty yards 

 on, where he has journeyed to that his home must 

 be sought. The whole thing looks like sheer bluff. 

 Perhaps as such it is meant. All the same, I 

 rather favour the belief that, if at the correct date 

 you chance on a male obviously perturbed, and if, 

 further, he refrains from straying off, but merely 

 drops into covert hard -by, you are somewhere on 



