THE SEDGE WABBLER 



287 



way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and known that the grasshopper 

 kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta, 

 whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the 

 note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush, and 

 will sin^ at a yard's distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to 

 go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted ; and then it would run, creeping like 

 a mouse before us for a hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns ; yet it 

 would not come into fair sight ; but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on 

 the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with its wings." 



I can corroborate this account by personal experience of the bird, and generally found 

 that the country people entirely denied that the strange hissing whistle was that of a bird, 

 and attributed it to the field mouse. The ventriloquial power (if it may so be termed) is 

 as remarkable as in the case of the common grasshopper, for it is almost impossible to 

 ascertain from the sound the distance or even the direction of the creature which 

 utters it. 



GRASSHOPPER WARBLER. Calamodyta loc-Mstella. 



The nest of the Grasshopper Warbler is cup-shaped, and made of various kinds of 

 grasses, the coarser being woven round the circumference, and the finer placed in the 

 centre. It is so admirably hidden that it is discovered less frequently than that of any 

 other warbler. In all my bird-hunting days, I was never fortunate enough to secure an 

 egg of the Grasshopper Warbler, although the bird was far from uncommon. A large 

 patch of furze is a favourite locality for the nest, and the bird hides it so ingeniously 

 among the thick roots of the prickly shelter, that even when the bird is watched to its 

 home, its discovery is a matter of very great difficulty. The eggs are from five to seven 

 in number, and their colour is reddish-white, speckled with dark red spots. 



The general colour of the Grasshopper Warbler is greenish-brown, each feather being 

 brown in the centre and green at the edges, so that its whole aspect presents rather a 

 spotty or mottled appearance. The under surface is pale brown, diversified with some 

 dark spots on the neck and breast. The total length of the bird is about five inches and 

 a hal 



THE generic title of Calamodyta, which has been given to the grasshopper Warbler 

 and the SEDGE WAEBLEE, signifies a diver into reeds, and has been attributed to these 

 birds in consequence of their habit of diving abruptly among the herbage whenever they 

 are alarmed. 



