■68 THE BIRDS OF SUSSEX. 



GRASSHOPPEK-WARBLEK. 



Acrocephalus ncevius. 



ThiSj like most of our immigrants, arrives in the county in 

 April, departing in September. It is by no means uncom- 

 mon, and, provided there is sufficient concealment, it does 

 not seem at all particular in the choice- of its locality; 

 neither does the immediate vicinity of water appear to be 

 requisite. 



For its nesting purposes, however, it chooses some tangled 

 hedgerow, or some spot in a thick furze-field, where the 

 ground is overgrown with long grass and close-growing 

 herbage, and the nest is most carefully concealed. It is 

 fond of placing it in a wheel-rut close to a hedge and over- 

 grown with weeds, and when approaching or leaving it, is 

 careful not to show itself within forty or fifty yards of it, 

 which makes it extremely difiicult to discover the nest, the 

 rut being often full of brambles and rough bushes. As a 

 proof of the difficulty of finding the nest, I am quite sure 

 that one pair at least have, for the last forty years, bred 

 within a hundred yards of my house, but I have sougTit it 

 in vain. Besides the places I have mentioned, this bird 

 frequently builds in marshy spots covered with sedge or 

 flags. I have never found the nest myself, but my son 

 brought me the eggs from one he found some years ago in 

 St. Leonard's Forest. 



That the bird is so little known is hardly to be wondered 

 at, as even its trilling note would not strike an ordinary 

 observer as having anything to do with a bird, and might 

 easily be supposed to proceed from a cricket or grasshopper, 

 and should he catch sight of it in the cover, its movements 

 are so much like those of a mouse, that he might easily mis- 

 take it for one. It is, moreover, frequently a difficult mattei* 



