31-2 THE BIRDS OF HELIGOLAND 



126. Pallas' Warbler [GESTKEIFTER HOHKSANGEK]. 

 SYLVIA CERTHIOLA, Pallas. 1 



Sylvia (Calamoherpe) certhiola. Nauinann, xiii. ; Blasius, Nachtrdge, 91. 



Pallas' Warbler. Dresser, ii. 633. 



Bee-fin Trapu. Temminck, Manuel, i. 186, iii. 113. 



I was not a little proud of niy collection, at that time very 

 modest as regards numbers, when so eminent an authority on 

 the European bird-fauna as Blasius, during his first visit in 

 1858, remarked in reference to two examples, ' that he could not 

 on the spur of the moment determine them.' And great was my 

 joy when my reply, expressed more in the form of a question, 

 that one of them might be S. certhiola, was confirmed in the 

 course of the conversation. The other bird was S. borealis 

 which naturally at that time I had not been able to become 

 acquainted with. 



For this addition from the far east of Asia, European orni- 

 thology is again indebted to Heligoland. Temininck, indeed, had 

 cited the species as European, but this was owing to an error, the 

 example described by him, which was obtained from Pallas, having 

 been shot east of Lake Baikal. 



Von Middendorff has obtained this Reed Warbler on the Sea 

 of Ochotsk, and Von Kittlitz has met with it in Kamtschatka. 

 My example, which Blasius at that time called the jewel of my 

 collection, I obtained here on the 13th of August, it having been 

 caught on the preceding night at the glasses of the lighthouse. 

 It is a young bird in the first autumn plumage. 



The plumage of this species, especially in young birds, has a 

 silky sheen, as in S. aquatica and S. pliragmitis, and is unlike the 

 broadly-barbed and stiff plumage of 8. locustella. In my example 

 the feathers of the upper parts are olivaceous reddish-brown (oliven- 

 rostbraun), and have in the middle a brownish-black longitudinal 

 stripe occupying about a third of the breadth of each feather, and 

 extending, as in S. aquatica, to the tip of each. In this way con- 

 nected stripes are formed on the head and back, which, at the back 

 of the neck, are somewhat indistinct, while on the rump they are 

 almost supplanted by the broad edges and tips of the feathers 

 which here pass into pure olivaceous rusty yellow (oliven-rostgelb) ; 

 the same happens in regard to the upper tail-coverts, which, how- 

 ever, have the same dark coloration as the feathers of the back. 



All the lower parts of the bird, with the exception of the under 



1 Locustella certhiola (Pall. ). 



