THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 309 



124. Sedge Warbler [SCHILF-ROHKSANGER]. 

 SYLVIA PHRAGMITIS, Bechstein.i 



Heligolandish : Siillen-Krciper = Reed Warbler. 



Sylvia phragmitis. Naumann, iii. 648. 



Sedge Warbler. Dresser, ii. 597. 



Bee-Jin phragiu it e. Teniniinck, Manuel, i. 189, iii. 115. 



This bird might, as compared with its generic relatives, not 

 inaptly be termed the Northern Heed Warbler, for no other species 

 advances in the summer into such high latitudes ; and inasmuch 

 as it does so in large numbers, Heligoland, too, receives a numerous 

 contingent of these northern migrants. Not only does the bird 

 occur here more frequently than any of the related species, but its 

 numbers exceed those of all the others taken together. For a 

 Si/h'la of such small size, the migration of this species commences 

 here Very early, it being by no means rare to meet with solitary 

 arrivals as early as the end of March. The main body, how- 

 ever, arrive during April, though the time of migration lasts 

 pretty late into May. The bird may then be seen daily gliding 

 about among garden bushes, or the rock talus at the foot of the 

 cliff, or even seeking for aquatic insects among the sea-tang 

 washed ashore. 



During the autumn migration, which begins as early as August 

 and lasts into October, the bird is met with in large numbers in the 

 potato- and cabbage-plots of the Upper Plateau (Oberland), especially 

 in fields which are lying fallow, and are much grown over with wild 

 mustard, but occasionally also numerously among the rubble and 

 sea- wrack at the foot of the cliff. 



The breeding range of this species is of a very wide extent. In 

 Scandinavia it reaches to 70 N. latitude, and thence stretches 

 through England, the north of France and Germany, down to the 

 Danube regions, and eastwards within the same parallels of latitude 

 to the other side of the Jenesei, where the bird was still found 

 abundantly by Seebohm. 



1 Acrocephalus phragmitis (Bechst. ). 



