A 6EASSH0PPEE WAEBLEE. 97 



has the luck to watch it alive, even without a detailed examin- 

 ation of its structure, will doubt its true relationship to the 

 Sedge-warhler and the Reed-warhler. It is not a water-haunting 

 bird, but still rather recalls the ways of its relations, by 

 choosing deep ditches thickly grown with grass and reeds, 

 and sheltered hy bramble-bushes; it seems to need something 

 to climb up and down, and to creep about in ; like the sedge- 

 birds, it seldom flies any distance, and one is tempted to fancy 

 that all these species would gradually lose the use of their 

 wings as genuine organs of flight, if it were not for the yearly 

 necessities of migration. 



I once had a remarkable opportunity of watching this very 

 curious bird. It was about the beginning of May, before the 

 leaves had fully come out; a time which is very far the best 

 in the year for observing the smaller and shyer birds. Intent 

 on pairing or nest-building, they have little fear, if you keep 

 quite quiet, and you can follow their movements with a glass 

 without danger of losing sight of them in the foliage. I was 

 returning from a delicious morning ramble through Brueme 

 wood, and was just rounding the last comer of it, where a 

 small plantation of baby saplings was just beginning to put 

 on leaf, when my ear caught the unmistakable ' reel ' of this 

 bird. Some other birds of the warbler kind, wren, robin, 

 sedge-bird, can produce a noise like the winding-up of a 

 watch, but none of these winds it up with such rapidity, or 

 keeps it going so long as the Grasshopper Warbler, nor does 

 any cricket or grasshopper perform the feat in exactly the 

 same way. Our bird's noise — we cannot call it a voice — is 



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