WHITETHROAT. 73 



WHITETHROAT. 



Sylvia rufa ; Becfin Grisette ; Weisskelchen. 



Nettle-creeper ; Haychat ; Polly Whitethroat ; Peggy 



Chaw. 



Bill, legs, and claws, brown ; head and neck, grey ; 

 back and wing-coverts, reddish-brown ; chin and throat, 

 white ; breast, whitish, tinged with rose-colour, which is 

 wanting in the female. Length, five inches and a half. 



Next to the Willow Warbler, this interesting bird 

 seems to be the most numerous and most widely 

 distributed of our summer migrants ; yet it is one 

 quite unknown to the public generally, whose fauna as 

 regards song birds is limited to the Blackbird, Thrush, 

 Lark, Robin, Linnet, and Wren. It has been well said 

 that this is a bird " of the thickets and the lanes ; " in 

 this country perhaps, more exactly, of " the hedges and 

 the lanes ; " for there are few hedges unfurnished with 

 a Whitethroat, and few country lanes in which this 

 merry warbler may not be heard and seen as he flits 

 from side to side, sallying ever and anon into the air, 

 and all the time apparently " inebriated with the 

 exuberance of his own verbosity." 



The song of the Whitethroat is by no means of the 

 first order ; at the same time, it is to me always 

 a pleasing sound, for to my mind a sort of golden 

 thread, peculiar to nearly all the Warblers, seems to 

 run through it. It is of a peculiarly hurried nature ; 

 and the bird whilst singing erects the feathers on his 

 head, distends his throat, and gesticulates with great 

 vehemence. I have often noticed that the song in 



