74 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



The Garden Warbler in breeding plumage is olive-brown above, the wings 

 and tail slightly darker, the flight feathers with narrow pale margins ; a slightly 

 paler streak over the eyes ; under parts dull buffish white, purer on the belly, 

 browner on the breast, flanks and centre of under tail-coverts. Bill deep brown, 

 base of lower mandible paler, feet leaden grey, iris hazel, eyelid white. The 

 female is very like the male but is slightly paler and probably has a somewhat 

 broader head, but of this I am not certain. After the autumn moult the adult 

 birds become more olive above and more buff- coloured below. Young birds 

 resemble their parents in winter plumage, but their secondaries have well-marked 

 pale margins. The breeding season extends from the end of May to about the 

 end of July. 



I have found this species breeding in considerable numbers in North Kent, 

 occupying the same localities as the Blackcap, which was also fairly abundant ; I 

 am therefore not prepared to endorse Seebohm's statement that " where the Garden 

 Warbler is abundant the Blackcap seems always to be rare, and vice versa." In 

 one sense, indeed, they do not breed together ; the Garden Warbler begins to 

 build about a fortnight or three weeks later than the Blackcap, and by the time 

 her first egg is deposited the earlier bird is hatching out or rearing her family. 

 Although often heard in the woods, this species is less frequently seen there than 

 either the Nightingale or Blackcap ; it is a shy skulking little bird frequenting the 

 densest cover, the outskirts of woods where the undergrowth is thick and .tangled, 

 also the so-called " shaws and shaves " of Kent, almost impenetrable copses and 

 plantations, well-timbered gardens, nurseries, and shrubberies ; the fact that the 

 Garden Warbler can be better recognised in the generally wider open spaces of the 

 last mentioned haunts, having doubtless earned it the name of hortensis. 



The nest of this bird is usually situated in tangled blackberry, or low bushes, in 

 copses or shrubberies ; but in kitchen gardens it mav sometimes be seen in goose- 

 berry bushes, or among well-covered pea-sticks : amongst the undergrowth in 

 small woods and thickets it is by no means a rare object at the end of May or 

 early in June ; though, of course, less common than that of the Whitethroat : I 

 have never found it at any great altitude, usually about two or three feet above 

 the ground. The structure of the nest is externally somewhat looser and more 

 slovenly than that of the Blackcap, but the cup is beautifully formed within ; the 

 outer walls are formed of dry bents, or goose-grass and other fibrous plants; 

 sometimes mixed with a little moss and wool and lined with fine roots and horse- 

 hair. The eggs vary in number from four to five and are tolerably constant in 

 their colouring ; they are generally creamy, but sometimes pale greenish white, 

 blotched and spotted with pale greyish olive or rufous brownish, with sometimes a 



