BIRDS 101 



imagined that Mr. Cordeaux must have had the Sedge Warbler 

 in mind when he penned his description of what he calls ' the 

 little reed wren,' — ' rattling away at its own wild song, and, not 

 content with that, appropriating the notes of many another bird, 

 then quietly at rest in the woods of Silverhow.' 1 



This reminds me that it is during the sympathetic twilight of 

 a summer's night that the lay of the Sedge Warbler can be heard 

 to the best advantage, in Lakeland at all events. Throw a stone 

 into a clump of willow bushes at any time, and your action will 

 provoke a polite rejoinder from a Sedge Warbler ; but that is 

 nothing to the interest of a full choir of Sedge Warblers chorus- 

 ing in noisy emulation during the first minutes of the new-born 

 day. Strolling along the top of the sandstone cliffs known as 

 Etterby Scar, one lovely night in May [the 21st, 1889], I felt 

 constrained to halt and listen for a while to the lays of many 

 Sedge Warblers, aye rehearsing afresh their oft-told professions 

 of love, while the silver moonbeams glanced fitfully on the rest- 

 less flood of Eden's fast-gathering waters. Suggesting to a passer- 

 by that he too should pause and listen for a moment to the 

 Sedge-bird's story, that enlightened individual assured me with 

 portentous gravity that the weird burden of sound produced by 

 the mixed Babel arising from so many tiny throats was ' only 

 the clocks of Carlisle striking twelve! ' 



GRASSHOPPER WARBLER. 



Locustella ncevia (Bodd. ). 



None of the summer birds are more whimsical in choice of 

 haunts, or fluctuate more in number from year to year, than 

 the Grasshopper Warbler. Yet it nests sporadically over most 

 of this area, from the mosses of Lower Furness to Newbiggin 

 Fell and the shores of the Solway Firth. Mr. Archibald finds 

 that a few pairs nest in the Rusland valley. The late J. Hind- 

 son wrote in his MS. notes : ' I have only heard the song of this 

 little warbler twice, once in a bed of furze, near Huttonroof, 

 again in a thick part of the hedge in Casterton Lane.' These 

 1 Zoologist, 1867, p. 870. 



