THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS 69 



VI 



SEDGE BIRDS 



IF the cuckoo tells her name to all the hills, so does 

 the sedge- warbler to the fluted reeds. And, like the 

 " wandering voice," our little bird seems dis- 

 possessed of a corporeal existence, and on through 

 summer is " still longed for, never seen; " and this 

 though common enough, for you may wander long 

 among the willow-banks, with a bird in every bush, 

 without one showing outside the corral of boughs. 

 The " sedge-reedling " comes to us during the second 

 and third weeks of May, and by ditch, or pond, or 

 river, wherever vegetation grows tall and luxuriant, 

 there the reed-wren may be found. At its spring 

 arrival on our coasts, its journey to its favourite 

 reed-haunts none ever sees. It travels in the night ; 

 you go out some May morning, and the rollicking 

 intoxication of the garrulous little bird comes from 

 out the self-same bushes from which you missed it in 

 autumn. From the time it first arrives it begins 

 to sing louder and louder as the warm weather 

 advances, and especially in the evenings. Then it is 

 that it listens to the loud-swelling bird-choir of the 

 woods, selecting a note from this and another from 

 that. For the sedge-warbler is an imitator, a mock- 

 ing-bird, and reproduces in fragments the songs of 



