12 ANNALS OF BIRD LIFE. 



notes of the Chiffchaff from the woods. Few 

 bi rc ls call so incessantly as this little brown-coated 

 Warbler ; his voice is heard in never-changing 

 tones until he leaves us again in autumn, or, to 

 be more accurate, until the moult commences. It 

 is a very singular circumstance that the Chiffchaff 

 is without a song, especially when we know his 

 congener, the Willow Wren, warbles most melo- 

 diously, and one which seems to show the Chiff- 

 chaff's much closer affinity with the larger and more 

 brightly coloured Wood Wren, whose musical 

 powers are also smaller than the Willow Wren's. 

 In its habit of frequenting trees, and in the colour 

 of its eggs a most important character among 

 this family of birds the Chiffchaff is certainly 

 more closely allied to the Wood Wren than it 

 is to the Willow Wren. A few days later the 

 amves, s th j atter \[^\ Q bird steals silently back from his winter 

 retreat in Africa to his summer quarters in the 

 woods, and gardens, and fields of our own country. 

 Soon after his arrival his remarkably sweet and 

 plaintive little song may be heard in almost every 

 tree and bush, and a few weeks afterwards the 

 pretty, semi-domed nest is built amongst the 

 brambles and tall herbage on some mossy bank 

 half-hidden by anemones and nodding bluebells, 

 in which the female lays half-a-dozen tiny white 

 eggs, speckled with pale reddish-brown. 



One of the most marked characteristics of 

 bird life in early spring is that it becomes more dis- 

 persed. In winter birds congregate in localities 



