MARSH WARBLER. 
73 
seems never to repose, and hardly does the eye catch 
it than its voice is heard perhaps a hundred paces 
farther off. Of all the Reed Warblers it has the most 
beautiful and varied song, enlivening an otherwise dull 
and monotonous part of the country. It is a master 
in imitation, and knows quite well how to blend, in a 
delightful whole, the different songs of the surrounding 
birds. In warm summer it sings all night through, 
and so charmingly in the stillness of the time 
and scene, that we are tempted to compare it with 
the Nightingale. Its call-note is not often heard, but 
is similar to that of other Reed Warblers. Its nest is 
never placed over water, nor even over marshy ground ; 
it is found in shrubs and bushes from one to three 
feet above the ground: the inside is deep, like that 
of other Reed Warblers’ nests, and formed of delicate 
grass blades, straws, nettle fibres, and spiders’ webs. It 
is lined with very fine straw and a tolerable quantity 
of horse-hair. It lays four or five eggs, which are 
bluish white, sparingly spotted with delicate grey dots, 
and olive brown and ash grey spots.” 
Brehm, in Biideker’s work upon European eggs, says 
of this bird: — “It builds in bushes in meadows and 
on the banks of ditches, rivers, ponds, and lakes. The 
nest is made of dry grass and straws, with panicles, 
and interwoven with strips of inner bark and horse- 
hair outside. The rim is only very slightly drawm in. 
It has a loose substructure, and is by this and its 
half-globular form, suspended on dry ground between 
the branches of the bushes or nettles, easily distinguished 
from the strongly-formed nest of S. arundinacea, which 
is moreover built over water. It lays five or six eggs 
the beginning of June, which have a bluish white 
ground, with pale violet and clear brown spots in the 
VOL. II. 
M 
