NATURE'S CAROL SINGERS. 



It generally builds its nest at some 

 little height from the ground in thorn, 

 briar, bramble, gooseberry, and other 

 bushes growing in woods, clumps of trees 

 in the proximity of streams, orchards, 

 shrubberies, gardens, and hedgerows. 

 Sometimes the structure, which is made 

 of straws, blades of dead grass, and 

 rootlets, lined with horsehair, is hung 

 amongst nettles like that of a White- 

 throat, or placed low down in long grass, 

 mixed with taller wild plants. 



The eggs, numbering four or five, 

 rarely six, vary in ground colour from 

 white to greenish-white or yellowish- 

 stone-grey, are spotted, blotched, and 

 clouded with underlying markings of ash- 

 grey and buffish-brown. Some speci- 

 mens are marbled with brown, and it is 

 often a difficult matter to distinguish 

 others from those laid by the Blackcap. 



By most people the Garden Warbler 

 is considered to rank next to the Black- 

 cap as a melodist, and the songs of the 

 two species resemble each other so much 

 that I have known a naturalist with 

 a good ear and wide experience unable to 

 say definitely which bird was singing 

 until he got a sight of the vocalist. 

 Mr. Hudson says that " the Garden 

 164 



