SAVTS WARBLER 127 



Family TURDID/E. Subfamily SYL VIINsE. 



SAVI'S WARBLER. 



Locustella luscinioides, SAVI. 



SAVI'S WARBLER is a witness to the unquestionable fact that no Wild 

 Birds Protection Act which does not forbid the reclaiming of so-called waste 

 land, will avail to hinder the rapid decrease of our British Avifauna ; interference 

 with the liberty of Britons will not affect it one iota : most of our interesting birds 

 are doomed, sooner or later, to banishment ; for they will only breed in their 

 accustomed haunts ; and where the proper conditions, to which they are used, cease 

 to exist, they will not remain. So long as gardens remain we shall probably 

 retain some of the commoner species, such as the Thrushes, the Robin, Hedge- 

 Accentor, and Tits, the Garden Warbler, Spotted Flycatcher, and a few others ; 

 but the birds of the fens, marshes, moors, and forests, must eventually recede 

 before the steady increase of bricks and mortar. 



This marsh-loving bird is found in the larger reed-beds of South Russia, 

 Austria, Italy, Holland, the south of France, Spain, North Africa, and Palestine : 

 in the delta of the Rhone, and in North Africa it is probably a resident species, 

 but in its more northern haunts it is a migrant. 



In Great Britain Savi's Warbler has probably become extinct ; between the 

 years 1843 and 1856 a good many specimens, together with nests and eggs of this 

 species, were obtained ; but the last British example was shot on Surlingham 

 broad, on June yth, 1856, and passed into the collection of Henry Stevenson, the 

 well-known author of the " Birds of Norfolk." The fens of Norfolk, Cambridge, 

 and adjoining counties were previously resorted to by this rare little bird. 



The upper surface of Savi's Warbler is russet-brown; flight- feathers slightly 

 darker; tail-feathers with slight indications of transverse bars ; under parts brownish- 

 buff; the throat and centre of abdomen white; under tail-coverts redder, with 

 slightly paler tips ; bill dark-brown above, paler below ; feet pale brown ; iris 

 hazel. The young are described as less rufous above and paler below than adults. 



Mr. Stevenson states that the marsh-men of Norfolk know this bird under the 

 title of the "red craking reed-wren"; he took down the account of his specimen 

 as given by the man who shot it as follows : " Being engaged on the broad all 



