NATURE NEAR LONDON 



bough. This is a habit of the sedge-birds. Not 

 in the least timid, they chatter at your elbow, and 

 yet always partially hidden. 



If in the withey, they choose a spot where the 

 rods cross or bunch together. If in the sedges, 

 though so close it seems as if you could reach for- 

 ward and catch him, he is behind the stalks. To 

 place some obstruction between themselves and any 

 one passing is their custom ; but that spring, as the 

 foliage was so thin, it only needed a little dexterity 

 in peering to get a view. The sedge-bird perches 

 aside, on a sloping willow rod, and, slightly raising 

 his head, chatters, turning his bill from side to side. 

 He is a very tiny bird, and his little eye looks out 

 from under a yellowish streak. His song at first 

 sounds nothing but chatter. 



After listening a while the ear finds a scale in 

 it an arrangement and composition so that, 

 though still a chatter, it is a tasteful one. At in- 

 tervals he intersperses a chirp, exactly the same as 

 that of the sparrow, a chirp with a tang in it. 

 Strike a piece of metal, and besides the noise of the 

 blow, there is a second note, or tang. The spar- 

 row's chirp has such a note sometimes, and the 

 sedge-bird brings it in tang, tang, tang. This 

 sound has given him his country name of brook- 

 sparrow, and it rather spoils his song. Often the 

 moment he has concluded he starts for another 

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