Birds. 97 



Note on the Reed-Warhler ^ (Sylvia arundinacea, Shaw). 

 By Mr. W. H. Thomas. 



These merry, courageous, little birds are common within a few 

 miles of London. 1 have found them in abundance in the reed-beds 

 on the banks of the Thames, between Erith and Greenwich. 



In seeking them you must not be afraid of labour in pushing your 

 way through reeds ; you must likewise take care to get as firm a foot- 

 ing as possible, for many of these places are very treacherous, and I 

 have more than once suddenly sunk with one leg into a deep hole, 

 and have had some difficulty in extricating myself. When hunting 

 in such places, I generally have a stout hedge-stake or clothes-prop 

 to try the soundings with. From the time that the reeds are half 

 grown until the latter end of July, these birds frequent them in abun- 

 dance, and their nests with eggs or young may be readily found : I 

 have taken the young as late as the 13th of August. They continue 

 about the reeds until the middle or end of this month, when I believe 

 they migrate, with the exception of an occasional late-hatched bird. 



The food of the reed-warbler principally consists of small spiral- 

 shaped shell-snails, which occur in great plenty in reed-beds, often 

 completely covering the lower part of the reed-stems ; they also eat 

 beetles, and a variety of small insects. 



In ditches, where reeds grow thickly, and the sides have plenty of 

 stunted thorn-bushes intermixed with brambles and rank grass, the 

 reed and sedge-warblers* are close and sociable neighbours, and I 

 have frequently found the nests of both species within half-a-dozen 

 yards of each other. The reed-warbler's nest is suspended from the 

 stems of the reeds, although the outer branches of the thorn-bushes 

 are often entangled with them. The sedge-w^arbler's nest is always 

 fixed in the low thorn-bushes, and out of many dozens that I have 

 found, I have never met with one fixed to the reeds, unless a stray 

 stem, growing through the bushes, has now and then been as it were 

 accidentally intertwined, from its being placed on an outer branch, but 

 even this very rarely happens. In other places where reeds have been 

 scarce and not sufficiently thick to hide the nest, by the side of ditches 

 and near gardens, I have found the nest of the reed-bird placed in 

 closely -branched elder-trees. 



The nest of the reed-warbler is often elegantly built, and generally 

 fixed to three or four reed-stems. It is composed of slender blades 



* Calamoherpe arundinacea. 



H 



