86 THE WARBLERS 



GRASSHOPPER- WARBLER 

 WITH A NOTE ON SAVI'S WARBLER 



[E. L. TURNER] 



Bound up in the lithe and speckled body of the grasshopper- warbler 

 is a whole tiny bundle of contradictions. It is at the same time the most 

 skulking of birds, yet one of the easiest to watch when busied witli 

 parental duties, and quite the least difficult of the warblers to photo- 

 graph as soon as the young are hatched. Personally I am most 

 familiar with this bird in the marsh-lands ; yet it is not confined to 

 these districts, but frequents also dry soils, heaths, moorland hills, 

 common hedgerows, and the outskirts of plantations. 



Stevenson speaks of it as a rare bird in Norfolk about the 

 year 1852, * yet it is common enough now in the Broadland, though 

 curiously uncertain in numbers ; one year quite numerous in any 

 given locality, while during the next perhaps scarcely one pair will 

 be heard in their usual haunts, whereas the following season they 

 may be as common as ever. This is characteristic of the species 

 everywhere. 



The grasshopper-warbler is more often heard than seen. From 

 the midst of a low sallow bush there comes a curious monotonous 

 rhythmical sound, now rising and falling, or gradually becoming a rapid 

 crescendo ; sometimes close at hand, then apparently dying away in 

 the distance. This is the song of the grasshopper-warbler which, 

 when once heard, can never again be confused with the chirping of a 

 real grasshopper, although quite unlike a bird's so-called "warble." 

 It is as if the sound were wound upon a reel inside the singer, and 

 gradually drawn out in one long continuous thread. Hence its local 

 name of " Reeler," not because this song is like the spinning of a 



1 Birds of Norfolk, vol. i. p. 106. 



