BLACKCAP. 397 



Its call-note is a harsh tac or tec quickly repeated ; and when alarmed it 

 scolds like a Whitethroat. 



The Blackcap is a restless little bird, and it is only now and then that 

 he allows you a brief moment's glimpse of him as he glides about his 

 favourite cover. He hops quickly from branch to branch, sometimes 

 appearing on the topmost twigs or on the outside ones, but generally con- 

 fining himself to the thickest parts of the brake. 



Although the Blackcap arrives somewhat early and pairs soon after its 

 arrival, its nest is rarely found before May, when the vegetation is suffi- 

 ciently advanced to provide the means of concealment. The time of 

 nesting may possibly be regulated by the abundance or otherwise of the 

 food on which its young are reared, such as caterpillars and small insects. 

 The site of its nest is usually in the most secluded part of its haunt. 

 Sometimes it is placed amongst the briars and brambles, growing but a 

 few inches from the ground, in the secluded corner of a plantation or 

 shrubbery, and more rarely in a tuft of herbage growing thickly round 

 some stunted bush, and very often in the hedges, amongst the woodbine. 

 Dixon has also known it in the branches of the holly, and in one instance 

 in an elder tree. It is very often placed near water, amongst the mass of 

 shrubs usually found on the banks of a woodland stream. It is made of 

 dry grass-stems, leaf-stalks, a little moss, and coarse roots, cemented 

 together with a few cobwebs and insect-cocoons, and lined with a few 

 horsehairs. Although very slight in structure, it is well built, very com- 

 pact, and most beautifully rounded. The eggs of the Blackcap are from 

 four to six in number, sometimes only three, in cases where the birds have 

 laid again after their first clutch has been taken. They are subject to 

 considerable variation in colour, although eggs in the same clutch resemble 

 each other. There are certainly three distinct types of the eggs of this 

 Warbler. The usual type is dirty white in ground-colour, suffused with 

 olive-brown or yellowish brown, clouded with darker tints of the same 

 colour, and here and there marked with rich brown spots and sometimes a 

 few streaks. The second type closely resembles certain varieties of the 

 eggs of the Barred Warbler : they are the palest of bluish white in ground- 

 colour ; and most of the markings are underlying ones of violet-grey, with 

 a few surface spots and blotches of yellowish brown, intermingled with one 

 or two spots and streaks of dark brown. The third, and perhaps the most 

 beautiful type, certainly the rarest, is uniform pale brick-red in colour, 

 indistinctly marbled with darker shades, and sparingly spotted and streaked 

 with dark purplish brown. The usual type of the Blackcap's egg very 

 closely resembles the eggs of the Garden- Warbler ; but they are perhaps 

 more uniformly clouded and brighter in colour than those of that bird. 

 They vary in length from '85 to "75 inch, and in breadth from '6 to 

 55 inch. 



