CHAPTER XVI 

 THE GREAT REED-WARBLER 



ONE June morning I was working through a large reed 

 jungle, the water over my boot-tops, with a quick-eyed 

 Broadsman, who knew every bird of the district by sight, 

 and name too, though his nomenclature was provincial. 



The sun was shining brightly, and a nice south-easterly 

 sailing breeze blowing through the old reeds, that shook 

 their ragged tassels this way and that, so that, as we 

 marched through the tall crop, we grew dizzy with the 

 ever-shifting reeds, and seemed to be walking up hill and 

 down, though really on a flat bog. Suddenly the marsh- 

 man stopped in his sinking footsteps, held up his finger, 

 and looked eagerly towards an opening in the reeds on his 

 left, and yet in front of him. I listened as I sank into the 

 soft ooze, and heard a hoarse chuckling a voice more like 

 that of a large mechanical sedge-warbler than anything I 

 could think of. 



When the notes stopped, the marshman crept forward 

 stealthily in the direction of the sound, whilst I stood still, 

 now over my boot-tops in water, looking silently after him. 

 As he neared the opening, I saw him looking keenly round 

 the yellow waste of stalks, and suddenly he turned and 

 beckoned to me eagerly. 



I stole up to him, and he pointed to a broken spray of 

 reed some thirty yards away, and whispered eagerly, " What 

 be they? Look yonder reed-birds as big as mavishes." 

 I looked in the direction indicated, and saw at once the plate 

 in Lord Lilford's book only alive ; they were undoubtedly 



