"8 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



not always strictly confined to sedges and reeds, it is almost invariably to be 

 found in the neighbourhood of water ; * thus in Kent I met with it in numbers 

 in a plantation which was frequently converted into a marsh by the overflow of a 

 mill-stream, and in Norfolk, in lanes within a stone's-throw of the broads. With- 

 out question the best and most likely situations in which to look for the nest are 

 in reeds and sedges, or in willows or hawthorns overhanging the water : and here 

 I feel constrained to contradict a statement which has been made, respecting the 

 situation of the nest, by several excellent observers and well-known Ornithologists. 

 Seebohm and others assert that the nest of this bird "is never suspended between 

 the reeds like the Reed- Warbler's, but is supported by the branches " ; yet of the 

 many nests which I took on the Ormesby broads in 1885 and 1886, nearly all 

 were suspended precisely like those of the Reed- Warbler, several reeds being 

 interwoven loosely into the walls of the nest, which was placed above the junction 

 of a leaf in at least one of the said reeds. As seen from our boat, it would have 

 puzzled the keenest observer to say to which species the suspended nest belonged, 

 though a glance at the eggs at once settled the question. 



Sometimes the nest is built in a hawthorn hedge, sometimes in nettles 

 at the foot of a hedge ; and all those which I have discovered in the marshj^ 

 plantation (part of which, when under water, was converted into a thousand 

 tiny islets formed by the roots, and was most awkward to cross) were built 

 amongst brambles, precisely in such a situation as would be chosen by the 

 Garden- Warbler. 



For many years I collected eggs, without troubling to take the nests, but 

 eventually the importance of studying the variation of nests as well as eggs became 

 impressed upon me, and during the few years in which I acted upon this convic- 

 tion, I obtained amongst others some thirty or forty nests of the present species, 

 from which I was able to select eleven fairly well-defined distinct types for my 

 permanent collection, and an extremely pretty series they make, varying from a 

 stoutly built structure of twigs, grass-stalks, feathers, wool, horsehair, and fibre, 

 fully an inch and a half thick, to the flimsiest little fabric of goose-grass, fibre, 

 wool, and the flowering heads of reeds : some nests seem to be made entirely of 

 fine grass-stems, and much resemble those of the Greater Whitethroat, others are 

 more like those of the Blackcap, and others again are almost sparrow-like in their 

 untidiness and in the careless use of white feathers in the walls, though scarcely 

 so in form, t 



'■ I have taken the nest as far as a hundred yards or more distant from water. 



t I have a nest of the House-Sparrow taken from a Sand-Martin's burrow which is not much unlike this 

 tvpe, even in form. 



