66 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



Its usual winter quarters are Northern and Central Africa, Arabia, Palestine, 

 where it is also said to breed, and Persia. 



In Great Britain its distribution is decidedly local, being especially so on 

 the east and west coasts and in Scotland, whilst in Ireland it is not known 

 to occur. 



The adult male has the crown smoky grey, the nape, back and upper 

 tail-coverts brownish slate-grey, the wings greyish brown with paler margins 

 to the innermost secondaries, the tail-feathers dark brown excepting the outer 

 ones, which are greyer and have white outer webs ; lores and ear- coverts 

 dark brown. Under surface white, slightly tinged with yellowish brown on 

 the breast and flanks ; bill dark slate- grey inclining to black, the under 

 mandible with pale base : feet slate-grey ; iris pale brown. The female is 

 slightly smaller and duller- coloured than the male. Young birds are browner, 

 with better denned pale margins to the wing-feathers ; bill and feet paler ; 

 iris hazel. 



The Lesser Whitethroat reaches us late in April or early in May and 

 usually leaves us again late in September, but stragglers remain nearly a 

 month later, and Mr. Swaysland even obtained an example at Brighton in 

 November. 



This species is more skulking in its habits than its larger relative, it 

 frequents the margins of dense woods, copses, plantations, shrubberies, rural 

 uncultivated hedges, especially those which border little frequented lanes and 

 thickly planted gardens. When disturbed it either slips away into the dense 

 scrub or flies up into the branches of some lofty tree where it hops restlessly 

 from twig to twig uttering an excitable defiant note tsee, tsee, tsee, repeated 

 rapidly nine or ten times : if disturbed from its nest, however, its note is 

 more like kek, kek, kek : the song is a rapid repetition of one whistled note ; 

 it has been called a trill, but is too staccato to answer that description ; a 

 few lower notes are sometimes added, but even these have a monotonous 

 character. 



The nest is constructed at any time between April and June, but I have 

 found more in May than in either of the other months ; it varies considerably 

 in its height from the ground, being sometimes placed among the upper twigs 

 of a tall hawthorn hedge, sometimes in brambles only a foot or two above 

 the earth ; it is also occasionally found in furze-bushes ; but I took most of 

 my nests either from hedges on the outskirts of woods, or in country lanes, 

 the height from the ground being about four feet. Mr. Frohawk tells me 

 that the Lesser Whitethroat, when building in shrubberies, very frequently 



