The Chiffchaff. 97 



In Great Britain this species is probably most abundant in the ■ south and 

 south-west of England, but it is fairly common in suitable localities throughout 

 England and Wales: in Scotland and Ireland it is less frequently met with and 

 much more local. 



The adult Chiffchaff in spring plumage is olive- green above, the rump being 

 slightly yellower; the wing and tail-feathers are brown, externally edged with 

 green; the flights narrowly tipped with white; a pale yellow superciliary streak 

 which becomes white behind the ear-coverts ; the lores and feathers behind the eye 

 olive ; under surface of body white, slightly greyish on the breast and flanks, and 

 faintly washed throughout with greenish-yellow ; the axillaries, under wing-coverts, 

 and thighs yellow; bill dark-brown, feet blackish-brown, iris hazel. After the 

 autumn moult the entire plumage becomes suffused with bufi&sh yellow. Young 

 birds are somewhat greener than adults and have the superciliary streak less 

 defined. 



The song of the Chiffchaff, if such it can be called, must be familiar to 

 everyone who has been in the country, or certainly to all inhabitants of our 

 southern counties. In the spring it is well-nigh impossible to ramble anywhere 

 near to a wood without hearing its incessant chlff-chiff, chiff-chiff, chiff-chiff (never 

 chiff-chaff, as its name would lead one to expect) : yet, common as it is, the nest 

 of this bird is not by any means so easy to discover as one would suppose.* 



But for its very inferior song, slightly smaller size, duller colouring, weaker 

 and more undulating flight, the Chiffchaff might readily be mistaken for the 

 Willow- Wren ; it is however far more a bird of the woods than the latter species, 

 often making its home in small clearings far away from the outskirts. Sometimes 

 however, the nest is built in small shaws or plantations where the undergrowth 

 is dense, and one nest in my collection was taken by my friend Mr. O. Janson 

 from a cavity in a steep bank just outside one of the Kentish shaws ; he was 

 searching for nests just ahead of me at the time and showed it to me in situ. 



A very beautiful nest, which I illustrated as a frontispiece to my " Handbook 

 of British Oology," I found in course of construction on the top of a short mossy 

 stump almost buried in a large patch of dead coarse grass in a small clearing, at 

 the side of a woodland path some 500 yards from its entrance. The nest itself 

 was situated about twenty feet from the path (towards which its back was turned) 

 and was so interwoven with the surrounding dead grass that unless I had seen 

 the birds carrying materials to it, I should certainly never have noticed anything 



* The nonsense that has been written about this bird saying chiff, cheff, chaff is only an evidence of the 

 fact that the English are even now an imaginative people (I believe this has been denied) ; take away the chaff 

 and I will admit that the second syllable is sometimes uttered, though I believe it is onl}- a slip on the part of 

 the bird, thus: — "Chiff-chiff, chiff-chiff, chiff-cheff, chiff-chiff." 



