GRASSHOPPER-WARBLER 91 



caterpillars with a varied assortment of flies, and woodlice. 

 Sometimes one tit-bit is brought at a time ; but often the parents 

 arrive with a whole assortment of dainties, which are placed inside 

 the gaping mouths and gently pushed down the throat. Sometimes 

 the whole amount of food is temporarily placed inside one bird's 

 gape, and rapidly distributed amongst the rest of the brood, a 

 method of feeding which I feel must be so disappointing to the 

 first recipient. This habit is common to many species, and 

 doubtless saves time. Until the young ones are a few days old 

 the grasshopper-warblers feed and brood alternately, though towards 

 1 1 a.m. the hen usually broods for a considerable time. 



The young have three black spots on the tongue, one on its 

 tip and two above, placed like the three points of a triangle. 

 Two broods may sometimes be reared in a season. I have found 

 a nest with five eggs as early as May 13th, and the keeper of 

 Hickling Broad sent me word of a nest with four young and two 

 eggs on July 28, 1909 ; also of two nests, one containing eggs, the 

 other young birds, on August 10, 1910. These instances do not, 

 of course, amount to absolute proof that the grasshopper-warbler is 

 double brooded, for they may have been merely belated attempts to 

 bring off a single brood ; especially as during July 1910 some of the 

 marshes were under water for three weeks. 



Nestling birds utter at first a very feeble squeak, though the call, 

 sharpened by hunger and jealousy, is anything but faint ! The alarm- 

 note of the parents is a sharp " Vwhit, twhit" rapidly repeated, which 

 often had the effect of making the little ones crouch down in the 

 nest; but the curious long-drawn weasel-like cry of the hen, when 

 really alarmed for the safety of her brood, was unlike that of any 

 bird I have ever watched. The instinct, which prompts their 

 parents to skulk in the undergrowth, is very early developed in the 

 nestling ; for when only five or six days old, if alarmed, they will slip 

 out of the nest into the dense vegetation, where it is almost impossible 

 to trace them ; and as their unusually long legs seem greatly to assist 



