MAESH 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 E-eed Warblers it has the most 

 beautiful and varied song, enlivening an otherwise dull 

 and monotonous part of the comitry. 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 Avarm 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 Badeker'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 drawn 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. arundmacea, 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 



