494 



PERCHING BIRDS. 



down or the flower of the cotton-grass. . . . The ground-colour of the eggs of the 

 orphean warbler is white, sometimes faintly tinted with grey and sometimes tinted 

 with brown. . . . The colour of the overlying spots varies from olive-brown to 

 nearly black." The orphean warbler is a large form of the blackcap, and decidedly 

 more elegant in shape than that species. The adult male has the crown sooty 

 black ; the general colour of the upper-parts is dull slate-grey ; the wings and tail 

 are brown, and the under-parts white shading into grey upon the breast and flanks. 



RUFOUS AND ORPHEAN WARBLERS (| liat. size). 



A more skulking species than the last is the garden-warbler 

 ' (S. salicaria), which arrives in its summer haunts in Europe about 

 the same date as the blackcap. It is rather a retiring bird, and is consequently often 

 overlooked. It has a sweet song, generally poured forth from the centre of some 

 thick bush or other cover ; its nest is of dry stems and moss, lined with fibres and 

 a few hairs; its eggs are greenish "white blotched with grey and olive-brown. The 

 garden- warbler is partial to fruit, but we have not seen it strip the berries from 

 the elder-bushes in the same way as the blackcap. The adult male has the upper- 

 parts olive-brown, darker and greyer on the wings and tail ; and the under-parts 

 greyish white. 



Among the sweetest songsters that visit the gardens and shrub- 

 beries of Europe is this slim and attractive species (S. atricapilla), 

 which arrives in the British Isles in April, and at once takes up its abode in 



