REED WARBLER. 45 
REED WARBLER. 
ACROCEPHALUS STREPERUS, Vieill. 
Pl. IX., figs. 5-7. 
Geogr. distr—In Europe as far northwards as 8. Scandinavia; it 
winters in Africa, and in Asia ranges as far east as Turkestan; has a 
more restricted range in the British Isles than the Sedge Warbler, 
and is decidedly rare in Scotland and Ireland. 
Food.—Insects, worms, slugs and snails. 
Nest.—A deep cup formed of dried grasses and bents, or the flower- 
ing tops of the reed; sometimes a little moss and a fair sprinkling of 
cobweb; lined with fine grassy fibre. 
Position of nest.—Interwoven, sometimes loosely, sometimes 
firmly, with two or three growing reeds, usually with three, in mill- 
pools, broad dykes, fens, and reedy banks of rivers and broads; also 
in hazel trees near water. 
Number of eggs.—5-6. 
Time of nidification.—V-V1; end of May. 
I have found that when anywhere in the neighbourhood 
of houses the best method of obtaining this nest is to let a 
long ladder fall from the bank across the reeds, which will 
then support it upon the surface of the water so securely 
that it is possible to walk out upon the rungs, almost to 
the extremity, nearly dry shod; this enables one to look 
right and left through the growing reeds, and to reach the 
nests, which are rarely placed near to the bank. Where 
there is considerable ebb and flow the nest is not in- 
variably placed above high-water mark, but is made 
additionally thick at the bottom, and woven loosely 
around the reed-stems above a leaf, so as to rise upon 
the surface of the water when at its highest; such was 
indeed the case with a nest (which, by the bye, contained a 
cuckoo’s egg) taken by myself in Kent on the 5th June, 
1875; the eggs in this nest were hard-set, but others 
obtained at the same time were quite fresh. I have three 
nests of this species built in forks of hazel; the first of 
these is normal in construction, and was obtained for me 
by my friend the Hon. Walter de Rothschild at Tring ; the 
second was sent to me from Salisbury by Mr. Salter, is 
unusually large and compact, formed of carefully-selected 
stout grasses interwoven with some apparently vegetable 
woolly substance, and bound tightly round externally with 
stronger grasses; it contains four eggs, decidedly larger 
than usual, and resembling one of the varieties of the eggs 
of the Marsh Warbler, though not one so strongly marked 
