502 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



The third bird in the same cut is the sedge-warbler (Acrocephalus shcenobcenus)^ 

 one of the commonest species of this genus in Europe, breeding among sedges and 

 reeds, or in the willows of marshes, and by the water-side as far north as Tromso in 

 Norway. In contradistinction to the following group, the reed-warblers, as they are 

 called generically, are possessed of considerable powers of song, while the name of 

 the grasshopper-warblers (Locustelld) clearly indicates the character of their musical 

 gifts. Three European species are figured in our cut, all of which inhabit marshy 

 districts and reed-beds. Their habits are said to be very skulking and partly noc- 

 turnal. My own experience in Kamtschatka with a near ally of L. ncevia, viz., 

 L. hendersonii, is very different, and deserves a place here. 



It was, as I thought, under rather peculiar circumstances that I made the first 

 acquaintance of the grasshopper-warbler. From what I had read about the habits of 

 allied species, and conjectured from the manners of Acrocephalus ochotensis, I listened 

 for this bird about and after sunset, wherever willows were abundant, in the marshy 

 valley bottoms. I recollected the many poetical accounts of ornithological enthusiasts 

 waiting in the wet swamps for the moon's rising over the white vapors, when the males 

 of L. ncevia would commence their strange chirping, and, invisible to the bewitched 

 naturalist, mock round him like mischievous elves, now pitching their ventriloquous 

 notes to the left, now to the right, until the gunning poet, in bewilderment and des- 

 pair, sends a shot at random in the direction from whence the creaking thrills seem to 

 proceed. So I tried patiently to get enchanted, bewildered, water-soaked, and mos- 

 quito-bitten, too ; but no Locustellci ! 



It was a very hot day in the summer of 1882, in fact the last day of June, that I 

 took an ornithological morning ramble to a broad valley just behind the rounded hills 

 upon the sloping base of which Petropaulski is situated. The weather had been dry 

 and warm for a considerable time ; the vegetation was longing for rain, and the soil 

 was gray and dusty. At last I determined to return ; the tropical rays of the sun at 

 noon had silenced all birds, and the only living being in the neighborhood not seeking 

 the cool shade was the mosquito-phobious naturalist. Suddenly I was struck by the 

 vigorous and rather protracted chirp of a heat-despising cricket. Something in its 

 note led me to wish to get hold of the producer, so I cautiously proceeded in the 



direction of the sound. Zirrrrr ! But who describes my astonishment when I 



found that the supposed cicada was a small bird facing the sun from the top of a 

 broken and dead birch ! As he did not mind the noise I made when breaking my 

 way through the five feet high grass, if I only took care to stop whenever he inter- 

 rupted his curious love-song, his fate was soon sealed. It is needless to say that I 

 now became an attentive listener to the grating sounds of the locusts, and half an hour 

 later I was rewarded by another male, which I shot from the outer branches of a leaf- 

 clad Betula ermani. 



The Old World warblers (Sylvia}, as we are obliged to term them in contradis- 

 tinction to our American nine-primaried warblers, are very interesting on account of 

 their geographical distribution. It is very generally asserted that the western Palas- 

 arctic region, or the European sub-region, have no characteristic birds of their own. 

 The warblers proper, however, seem to have their headquarters in the region surround- 

 ing the Mediterranean, while quite a number inhabit central and northern Europe 

 without extending into Siberia, though several southern species breed as far east as 

 Turkestan. Most of the migratory species winter in Africa. The plate facing page 

 496 illustrates two southwestern species, Agrobates galactotes, the rufous warbler, 



