CO TURDID.E. 



where these birds nest, as Savi's Warbler might suffer in 

 consequence. 



The precise time of their arrival I could not ascertain ; but it 

 is about the 1st of April ; and they are all gone by September. 

 The nests, sometimes very near to one another, were most 

 difficult to find, and, without exception, built in places where 

 the mud and water varied in depth from two or three inches to 

 perhaps two feet. All but one were in sedges, so well concealed 

 as only to be found by accident. We spent sometimes the whole 

 day in these marshes, looking in vain, with a gun in one hand 

 and a sickle in the other, the latter used to open the sedges with, 

 as it cut one's fingers severely to try and move them with the 

 hand. What with the hot sun and the stink of the mud, we 

 used to despair utterly after hours of fruitless search, but 

 generally found a nest in the evening. The whole marsh was 

 trodden down by us as if a herd of cattle had been wandering 

 about ; but perhaps the next day, going over the same ground, 

 we would find a nest in a bunch of sedges which had been passed 

 by within a yard. The nests were all alike, loosely and clumsily 

 built, solely constructed of dead sedge, often placed so close to 

 the water that the base was wet ; they were always in the open 

 marsh, none, that we saw, under bushes or in tall rushes or reeds, 

 and the single nest that was not in sedges was in a tuft of the 

 spiky rush so common in wet ground. In this case (the first 

 one, found by Mr. Denison) the bird flew off the only instance 

 in which it did so, as they creep off generally like a mouse. On 

 one occasion I cut away all the sedge round the nest, except 

 just the patch in which it was built, as I wanted to shoot the 

 bird from the nest to make certain of the identity of the eggs ; 

 but even then, after watching the old bird go in to the nest she 

 would not fly off, but ran across the open space which had been 

 cut away till she gained the shelter of the uncut sedges. Much 

 more frequently seen than Cetti's Warbler, the great difficulty 

 is in finding them when shot. If killed on the wing, it is almost 



