THE WARBLERS. 185 



hedge, and, with a flick of his tail, disappears on the other 

 side. The feathers of the head are also much puffed out, 

 giving the appearance of its being too big for the little body of 

 the bird. The female is less frequently seen, as she keeps 

 much more to the lower parts of the hedges, or to the thickest 

 brambles and bushes. The male, on the other hand, often 

 springs up into the air like a Tit-Lark, and descends singing to 

 his perch, often in a jerking manner, with his tail expanded. 

 In the autumn, like other Warblers, it devours numbers of cur- 

 rants and berries, and Mr. Dixon states that it also eats the 

 corn when it is in a soft and milky state. We have known 

 them to work great havoc in a row of peas. During the 

 summer, however, the food of the Whitethroat consists almost 

 entirely of insects, and it eats large numbers of Daddy Longlegs, 

 and it may often be observed flying off from its perch and 

 catching insects in the air, like a Flycatcher. 



Nest. A very slight, but deep, structure, composed of dry 

 grass-stems and bents, and lined with thin roots and horse-hair. 

 It is generally placed low down in the overhanging boughs of a 

 white-thorn or other bush, or amongst the smaller bramble- 

 stems, or, as said before, suspended in the nettles. 



Eggs. From four to six in number. The ground-colour 

 varies much. The predominant colour is olive, the ground- 

 colour of the egg being brownish-white, thickly speckled with 

 olive-brown, and very plainly spotted with violet-grey, of which 

 the underlying spots are really composed, but in many instances 

 these are so distinct that they appear to constitute the over- 

 lying spots, and are generally congregated at the larger end of 

 the egg. Other types of eggs have the ground-colour greenish- 

 white, and the spots are greenish-brown and violet-grey, never 

 o strongly indicated as in the first-mentioned variety. A 

 rarer type of egg has the ground-colour light green, with tiny 

 brown dots and larger markings of violet-grey. One remark- 

 able clutch from Epping Forest, in the Salrin-Godman collec- 

 tion, has the greenish-white ground-colour of the eggs almost 

 entirely obscured by blotches of reddish-brown, while the 

 darker markings are almost black, and are congregrated at the 

 large end of the egg in great blotches. Axis, 0*7-0*8 inch 

 diam., Q'5-0'6. 



