536 



The Living Animals of the World 



Photo by Scholastic Photo. O>.} {Parson's Green. 



YOUNG THRUSH. 

 This photograph shows the mud-lined nest. 



the spring migrants, remaining to nest, 

 and leaving again in the autumn. Some, 

 as the BLACK-CAP, WHITE-THROAT, CHIFF- 

 CHAFF, G-ARDEN-, WILLOW-, and WOOD- 

 WARBLERS, frequent woods, hedgerows, and 

 gardens ; whilst others, as the SEDGE- 

 and REED-WARBLERS, are found only 

 near water affording sufficient shelter in 

 the shape of reed-banks or osier-planta- 

 tions. 



The BLACK-CAP and GARDEN- WARBLER 

 rank as songsters of no mean talent, being 

 held second only to the nightingale. As 

 if by common consent, the two former 

 never clash, so that where black-caps are 

 common there are few garden- warblers, and 

 vice versa. 



Most of these birds build a typical 

 cup-shaped nest of dried grasses, lined 

 with finer materials, and placed near the 

 ground; but that of the REED-WARBLER 

 is a most beautiful structure, the dried 

 grass of which it is made being woven 

 around some three or four reed-stems, 

 making it seem as if the latter had, in 

 growing up, pierced the sides of the nest 



and are then captured and sold in large numbers 

 for food in the Russian markets, and occasionally 

 are sent over to London. 



Passing over a small group of comparatively 

 uninteresting American birds known as " Green- 

 lets," we come to the WARBLERS, a group which 

 constitutes one of the largest families of birds of 

 the Old World. The species included in this 

 family vary greatly in their characters, so that 

 it is by no means easy to give diagnostic char- 

 acters, whereby they may be readily distinguished 

 from the Ply-catchers on the one hand or the 

 Thrushes on the other. The Thrushes, however, 

 as a group, may be distinguished from the 

 Warblers by the circumstance that in the former 

 the young have a distinctive spotted plumage, 

 differing from that of the adults, while the 

 young of the Warblers are not so marked, 

 their plumage differing but little from that of 

 their parents. 



More than twenty species of warblers are 

 included amongst British birds. Although some 

 of them are but rare and accidental visitors to 

 Britain, others are amongst the commonest of 



Photo by J. T. Newman^ [Bwkhamsted. 



BLACKBIRD. 



The male and female are quite different one from another, and in ihi respect 

 differ from the Thrushes, in which the sexes are alike. 



