THE GRASSHOPPER WARBLER AND DARTFORD 

 WARBLER 



(Locustella locustella and Sylvia provincialis) 



THE Grasshopper Warbler, though pretty generally distributed 

 throughout this country, must rank as one of our rarer birds 

 and one whose habits are by no means easy to observe. It 

 has obtained its well merited and singularly applicable name 

 from its peculiar note, which sounds very similar to that of a 

 grasshopper. We have not a bird in our English woods and 

 fields more skulking in its habits than the Grasshopper 

 Warbler. Were it not for its singular song, it would gene- 

 rally escape the notice of even the most careful observers. 

 It skulks back again to its summer quarters in this country 

 towards the latter end of April, not reaching its northern 

 haunts before the beginning of May, and soon afterwards 

 announces its arrival by uttering its peculiar song. It may 

 be met with in almost every variety of country, provided the 

 ground is well covered with brushwood and herbage. I have 

 often heard its song on the moors, miles away from woods, 

 where it frequents the tall heather and the clumps of thorn 

 trees which here and there stud the waste. It inhabits 

 woods and plantations where the underwood is dense, and 

 shows an equal preference for the hedgerows which are choked 

 with a rank growth of coarse grass, briar, and bramble. I 

 have found it specially common on waste pieces of ground 

 where the country lanes widen out, and the open space is 



