WILLOW WREN 



Pliylloscopus trochilus 



HE Willow Wren is the most abundant and most widely 

 distributed of the warblers throughout Great Britain, and 

 may be seen during the breeding season in almost every 

 plantation or wood in the British Islands. 



It is one of the first arrivals in spring, and its 

 little song may be heard in the woods as early as the 

 second week in April. It is exceptionally fond of copses 

 of oak and birch with a good undergrowth of bracken and ferns, but there 

 are very few places where it is not to be seen hopping from twig to twig 

 diligently searching for insects. Far up the hill-side, where the burn dwindles 

 to a mere ditch, with a few dwarf birches struggling for existence among the 

 rocks and peat, we find the Willow Wren singing as gaily as ever, and it is 

 just as busy hunting insects or uttering its little song among the shrubs in 

 the ornamental gardens of most of our towns. 



The Willow Wren is a very restless bird, and is always on the move, 

 always hunting for insects, sometimes hanging upside down to examine the 

 under side of a leaf, or taking a little flight after some fly on the wing, 

 catching it with quite an audible snap, or hovering under some branch to catch 

 the insects which lurk in the crannies of the bark. Every now and again 

 during its search for food it stops to utter its simple song, a few notes 

 uttered in a descending scale, as it were a series of different pronunciations 

 of its call-note, ' Who-it? its little throat quivering with the exertion. 



The Willow Wren commences the work of nest-building early in May, 

 and full clutches of its eggs may be taken by the middle of the month. The 

 female sits very closely, and on being disturbed flutters along the ground 

 with outspread wings and tail to some bush near at hand, where she utters 

 her alarm-note, a plaintive ' teu-teti-icu.' 



The nest is a very difficult, almost impossible, one to find, it is so 

 carefully hidden, and except by putting up the sitting bird or watching her 

 drop down beside it, defies the most careful search. I remember being very 



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