Selous: Ornithological Observations in Brittany. I4I 
not quite at the spot. However, this may be a mistaken 
inference. 
Having watched many of these visits, and always seen the 
braken move in just this one place wherever else the bird went 
to, I at last walked up to it, but, instead of the nest, found a 
bird certainly quite full-fledged and resembling the parents, 
more especially the female, but with a certain young appearance 
not to be mistaken. It flew a little way as I came up, in the 
ordinary immature manner. I could not find any nest. It is 
plain, from this, that the female at any rate, if not the male 
bird also, has been occupied in feeding the young, and that, 
at least, one of the latter has left the nest ; if the last to do so, 
this would account for his still being near it. 
It was the same this afternoon. The young are now 
certainly being fed in various places, and sometimes the mother 
seems to have a difficulty in finding where the one or the other 
of them is. They utter, however (I suppose at least, that it 
comes from them) a plaintive cry more resembling a mew than 
a chirrup. Again it seems to be the female who does either 
all or most of the feeding, though the male is about in the 
neighbourhood, and the two converse, as it were, in answering 
snatches of song. I believe it is flies that the young are mostly 
fed on, though, as with other Warblers, caterpillars may play 
their part, and this seems only probable. Still, whenever I 
have seen anything in the parent’s beak, I have not been able 
to make out that it was a caterpillar. 
JUNE 22ND.—This morning there is much less to be seen 
of the feeding operations carried on by these birds, and what 
there is suggests that the young are getting further afield, and 
becoming more and more emancipated. Like the White- 
throat, this bird has, besides its song (which, however it be 
more praised, never seemed to me so sweet and rich as that of 
the Garden Warbler) a remarkable rattling sort of note very 
loud and continuous, which would popularly be called the 
alarm note, though, as with other birds, whose cries are thus 
labelled, it seems by no means always to express fear or anxiety. 
It is something like the analogous note of the Garden Warbler, 
but a more continuous, undivided sound, as if inside the bird’s 
body there were a small policeman’s rattle, that kept on going 
round, whereas that of the latter species is more syllabic like 
a quickly repeated ‘tut, tut, tut, tut, tut.’ 
JuLy 6TH.—There are signs now, of a pair of these Warblers 
either having or contemplating having a nest here, but, if they 
have, I hardly expect to discover it. It is the same place and 
the same vicinity as a fortnight ago, but whether the birds are 
the same, and can have come on again thus rapidly, I know 
not. 
(To be continued). 
“1915 April 1, 
