SAVI'S WARBLER. 395 



Concerning the geographical distribution of Savi's Warbler 

 there is no doubt still much to be learned. In Holland it is 

 extremely local, and will probably altogether disappear before 

 the advance of cultivation. In no part of Germany does it 

 seem to occur at all,* though admitted to a place in the contin- 

 uation of Naumann's work on the birds of that country; but it 

 appears in Galizia, and a single specimen was obtained by Herr 

 Zelebor at Bellye in the Hungarian Banat (Journ. fiir Orn. 

 1864, p. 72). It occurs also, says Alexander von Nordmann, at 

 Odessa in some numbers. Then we have no trace of it till we 

 find it in Palestine, where Canon Tristram procured a single 

 specimen. In Egypt, according to Capt. Shelley, it is resident, 

 tolerably abundant and generally distributed.! " It usually 

 frequents the corn-fields," he adds, " selecting the spots where 

 the crop grows most luxuriantly ; and it may also be found 

 in the reedy marshes of the Delta and Fayoorn, where I have 

 frequently seen it, and occasionally procured specimens. 

 When disturbed it leaves its shelter very reluctantly, and 

 flits away hurriedly, flying close to the top of the herbage 

 for a short distance, and then it suddenly dips down and is 

 immediately hidden. Nor will it allow itself to be driven 

 far from the place whence it originally started ; but if pur- 

 sued, prefers to seek shelter by creeping among the stalks of 

 the plants rather than expose itself again by taking wing." 

 In Algeria Mr. Salvin found it abundant in the marsh of Zana. 

 " On approaching the margin of the reeds," he says (Ibis, 1859, 

 p. 304), "its peculiar rattling note might be heard in every 

 direction. The bird, when uttering this cry, climbs to the 

 very top of a reed, often choosing the tallest, where it sits, if 

 not disturbed, for several minutes, without changing its posi- 

 tion." In this locality, he continues, the nests " can only 

 be found by wading in mud and water up to the middle, and 

 even then it is quite a chance to find one." Canon Tristram 



* Thienemann says he had eggs from Thuringia, indistinguishable from Dutch 

 specimens, but this kind of evidence is open to suspicion. 



t The figure in the Atlas accompanying Savigny's ' Oiseaux de 1'Egypte ' 

 pi. 13, fig. 3), commonly held to represent this species, certainly does not do so. 

 Audouin (Explication des Planches, &c., p. 278) refers it to the Grasshopper- 

 Warbler, and he, if any one, ought to have known what Savigny intended by it. 



