LESSER WHITETHROAT 65 



In the summer of 1900 I found the lesser white- 

 throat the better whitethroat I should prefer to call 

 it in extraordinary abundance in the large unkept 

 hedges east of the woods in the parishes of Fawley 

 and Exbury. Hitherto I had always found this species 

 everywhere thinly distributed ; here it was as abundant 

 as the reed-warblers along the dykes in the flat grass- 

 lands on the Somerset coast, and like the reed- warblers 

 in the reed and sedge-grown ditches and streams, each 

 pair of whitethroats had its own part of the hedge ; so 

 that in walking in a lane when you left one singing 

 behind you heard his next neighbour singing at a 

 distance of fifteen or twenty yards farther on, and 

 from end to end of the great hedge you had that 

 continuous beautiful low warble at your side, and 

 sometimes on both sides. The loud brief song of this 

 whitethroat, which resembles the first part of a chaf- 

 finch's song, is a pleasant sound and nothing more ; the 

 low warbling, which runs on without a break for forty 

 or fifty seconds, or longer, is the beautiful song, and 

 resembles the low continuous warble of the blackcap, 

 but is more varied, and has one sound which is unique 

 in the songs of British birds. This is a note repeated 

 two or three times at intervals in the course of the 

 song, of an excessive sharpness, unlike any other bird 

 sound, but comparable to the silvery shrilling of the great 

 green grasshopper excessively sharp, yet musical. The 

 bird emits this same silver shrill note when angry and 

 when fighting, but it is then louder and not so musical, 



