60 NEST AND EGGS. 



manner of the Sedge Reedling, with which, no doubt, it is 

 frequently confounded. Its song is loud, cheerful, much 

 diversified, and sometimes performed at night. Its nest dif- 

 fers from that of the bird above named in being composed of 



REED WARBLER. 



blades and stalks of grass, lined with fine hair and grass, fas- 

 tened to the stalks of several reeds at some height from the 

 ground, of an obconical form, from four to five inches in 

 depth externally, about three internally, and as much in 

 breadth at top. Being thus deep,' as Montagu remarks, 

 * it gives security to the eggs, which would otherwise be 

 thrown out by the wind.' They are four or five in num- 

 ber, eight and a half twelfths of an inch long, greyish 

 brown, faintly dotted and spotted with greenish brown, and 

 usually having one or two black irregular lines. The 

 young are fledged by the middle of July. 



In a representation of this bird's nest, given in Bolton's 

 4 Harmonia Ruralis,' the whole is loosely wound about 

 with woollen yarn, such as the poor people make stockings 

 of. One procured by Lightfoot had packthread twined 

 around it. 



Sweet records that he once found a nest of this bird's, 

 with five young ones, fastened up to the tall branches of a 

 poplar tree that grew at a little distance from the river, in 

 Brownhouse Lane, Fulham. 



