F ANT AIL WARBLER. 27 



of plants; the entrance into the long bottle-shaped nest either above 

 or sideways; five brilliant white eggs, which, however, vary much in 

 respect of the true ground colour and markings.' Brehm says nothing 

 about the nests, but that the eggs are light blue. In Egypt and 

 Nubia this bird breeds apparently in wheat and clover-fields, but I 

 myself only found it in date bushes, or on low thorns with dry grass 

 growing high about them. The nests were one or two feet above the 

 ground, were four inches and a half to six inches high, the deep nest 

 holes two inches to two inches and a half in diameter. The entire 

 construction is not very thick nor solid; its outward form is guided 

 by its surroundings, and resembles more or less the nests of the Reed 

 Warblers. It never, however, hangs loose, but is woven into leaves, 

 thorn stalks, small branches, and even high grass stalks. It is made 

 of dry grass and root fibres, the inside being carefully lined with 

 wool, hair, and fibres. The eggs, four in number, are of a lively 

 reddish white, and have very fine shells with numerous delicate rust- 

 coloured spots and points, which often at the greater end are crown- 

 shaped, and so closely placed as completely to hide the ground colour. 

 We also found some that had greenish white ground, and light violet 

 and rusty red dots and points. They are of an oval form. On the 

 27th. of June, 1852, I found in Central Nubia three broods: one 

 nest with two young ones and two unhatched eggs; the other two 

 partly hatched and as many fresh eggs; the third only two unhatched 

 eggs. We found the bird six thousand feet above the level of the 

 sea, down to the sea level. Its food is principally small insects and 

 insect eggs. Brehm says the undigested parts of small coleoptera and 

 diptera, caterpillars and snails, are cast up again. According to 

 Swinhoe, Tristram, Blyth, and Jerdon, the Indian and Chinese 

 varieties are not distinct from the European. A Malay specimen in 

 the Bremen Museum is almost exactly like the latter, differing only 

 in having the rump of a less lively rust-yellow brown, and the white 

 tips of the tail feathers underneath somewhat broader and clearer. 

 According to Finsch the young are distinguished from the old birds 

 by the remarkable rusty-yellowish brown ground-colour of the flanks 

 above, and the rusty yellow washed out underneath, tending to a 

 lively rusty yellow brown on the sides." 



In the "Bulletin de la Societe Ornithologique Suisse" for 1865, 

 there is an excellent paper upon the habits and propagation of this 

 bird, by Godefroy Lunel, as he had observed them in the south of 

 France. I make one or two extracts: — "The Fantail is sedentary in 

 the south of France, where it lives during a great part of the year, 

 in the vast swamps and their rushes which abut on the shores of 



