64 MOUNTAIN ACCENTOR. 



coming spring, which greet us with their merry or plaintive notes, 

 or, as in the Nightingale, waken up the stillness of the night with 

 that full, rich, and beautiful song, which is unequalled by any music 

 in the world. In all our summer walks or rides, however cultivated 

 or barren the scenery, by wood or river, mountain or lake, we are 

 sure either to see or hear some member of the family. We associate 

 with our earliest days the croak of the Whitethroat, as flitting from 

 branch to branch, or winding her way like a snake through the dense 

 fence, she sought how often in vain to scare us from her nest. Who 

 does not remember the "Renny Red-tail," and those old pollards in 

 that quiet lane where the half holidays of our youth were spent? or 

 who will not always think with a corresponding touch of melancholy, 

 of that low, soft, plaintive rebuke which the little green Willow 

 Warbler poured into the ears of those who invaded its domed nest, 

 so carefully hidden in the long grass; or the rich thrill of that saucy 

 Blackcap, as he heralds the coming warmth of spring and summer, by the 

 song of triumph which announces his nuptial victory against all rivals ? 

 Then, again, there is the Grasshopper Warbler, with his invisible form 

 and long sibilant note, and the Reed Wren, with his garrulous lec- 

 ture, as he winds among the herbage by the river side, or the Sedge 

 W^arbler, as it sends forth in the still night its song of rivalry with 

 the Nightingale. All these are salient beauties in that mental land- 

 scape which the naturalist often creates for himself, when the fortunes 

 of life may have carried him among sterner and less poetical realities. 



The SyhiidcB may be taken as typical of the Insectworce, — their food 

 being almost exclusively insects. But this is not quite true, for, not- 

 withstanding the assertion of the late Mr. Yarrell to the contrary, the 

 Willow Warbler will sometimes join in the more constant depredations 

 of the Whitethroat. 



Temminck divided the group into the Riverains, or those whose 

 habits were aquatic; Sylvaijis, or those found more or less inhabiting 

 woods; and 3Iuscivores, or those which live principally upon flies, 

 which they catch on leaves or on the wing. Count Yon der Miihle 

 has separated them into seven sections, which form, I think, a more 

 natural division, and which I adopted in the first edition, but as I think 

 it of great importance that a work like this should harmonize as much 

 as possible with standard works on our British Birds, I shall in dealing 

 with this family in the present edition follow as closely as I can the 

 arrangement adopted by writers on the Birds of Great Britain. 



The Mountain Accentor is an inhabitant of the south-east of 

 Europe, being found principally in Siberia, Russia, and the Crimea. 

 It occurs, but accidentally, in the south of Hungary, in the Neapolitan 



