206 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



until Mr. Warde Fowler discovered that it was a 

 regular summer visitant to Oxfordshire, also that it 

 was the latest of our migrants to arrive and a later 

 breeder by several weeks. It is curious that in a small 

 country so infested with ornithologists as ours this species 

 should have been overlooked. They, the ornithologists 

 and collectors, say that it is not so, that a bird with so 

 beautiful a song, so unlike that of his nearest relations 

 the reed and sedge warblers, could not have been over- 

 looked. Undoubtedly it was overlooked, and this 

 colony, or group of colonies, numbering seventy or 

 more pairs, must be quite an ancient one. There are 

 others too in Somerset, and no doubt many besides in 

 the west country and midlands. The species has not 

 diffused itself more in the country, I imagine, on ac- 

 count of its habit of nesting almost exclusively in the 

 withy beds, where their nests are as much exposed to 

 destruction as those of the skylark and land-rail in the 

 corn. The moist grounds where the willows are 

 planted are covered annually with a luxuriant growth 

 of grasses and herbage which must be cut down to give 

 air and life to the willows. The cutting usually takes 

 place about mid-June when the eggs are being laid 

 and incubation is already in progress in many nests. 

 The nests, whether attached to the withies or to the 

 tall stems of the meadow-sweet and other plants, are 

 mostly destroyed. 



I have gone into these details just to show that it 

 would be easy to give this bird a better chance of in- 

 creasing its numbers by inducing the owners of withy 



