44 BRITISH BIRDS’ EGGS. 
SEDGE WARBLER. 
ACROCEPHALUS SCHENOBENUS, Linn. 
Pl. IX., figs. 1-4. 
Geogr. distr.—Throughout Europe, migrating to N. Africa towards 
winter; it visits the British Isles in April and leaves them in 
September. 
Food.—lInsects in all stages, worms, slugs, and snails. 
Nest.—A somewhat deep and usually compact cup; constructed 
most frequently of dried grass, fine rootlets, and moss, lined with 
horsehair, feathers, and sometimes a little wool. 
Position of nest.—Low down in the outer branches of thorn bushes 
or hedges and brambles, sometimes overhanging dykes and ponds, in 
sedges and reeds, or among the stems of water-plants on swampy 
ground. 
Number of eggs.—4-8; usually 5. 
Time of nidification.—V-VI1. 
This species breeds everywhere in Great Britain; I have 
usually found its nest in thick hawthorn bushes overhang- 
ing water: certainly the most pleasant position in which 
to discover it, as it enables one to return home dry-shod ; 
Mr. Dresser, on the contrary, seems to have usually 
obtained it on marshy ground in patches of aquatic 
herbage, especially where Euphorbia, &c., are plentiful 
rather than where reed predominates; in Norfolk I have 
taken it out of the reeds and sedges which border some of 
the dykes or surround the islands on the Broads; it, how- 
ever, also occurs amongst nettles in wild places, and is then 
usually made with withered goose-grass loosely put together, 
and is shallower than when placed amongst reeds. I have, 
moreover, taken the nest in woods, amongst brambles, 
in just the same position as that occupied by the Garden 
Warbler, and my friend Mr. Salter took one or two nests 
out of ordinary roadside hawthorn hedges near Salisbury. 
The commonest type of egg is that represented by fig. 1, 
but some eggs are indistinguishable from those of the 
commoner yellow Wagtail, excepting that they usually 
have a little black line like a crack at the larger end; 
fig. 2 represents a very aberrant variety, approaching some 
eggs of the Reed Warbler. 
