SAVrS WARBLER. 



Locustella luscinioides (Savi). 

 Plate 8. 



Although in former days this bird was without doubt a regular visitor during 

 the summer months to the fens of the eastern counties of England, and bred there ; 

 its nest being well known to the marsh men of those parts ; it has now vanished 

 entirely from its old haunts, the last having been obtained in Norfolk in June 1856. 

 Since that date only one other example has occurred in Great Britain, viz. on Fair 

 Isle, Shetlands, in May 1908. 



The earliest known example of Savi's Warbler was got in Norfolk early in the 

 last century, and was erroneously considered by Temminck, to whom it was sub- 

 mitted, to be a variety of the Reed- Warbler, although later he seems to have had a 

 confused impression that it was Cetti's Warbler. In 1824 the Italian naturalist 

 Savi made it clear, from specimens obtained in Italy in 1821, that this was a distinct 

 species, and it has, therefore, been named after him. In Europe this bird is found in 

 the marshes of Holland, France, Spain, Italy, and portions of Russia. 



In habits it is usually shy and retiring, but in the early morning the males utter 

 their reeling grasshopper-like song from the top of some tall reed. Professor 

 Newton says (Yarrell's British Birds, 4th ed., vol. i. p. 393) : " It used to arrive 

 in the Eastern Counties, according to Mr. John Brown's information, about the 

 middle of April, and at its first coming was not shy ; but, when settled in its home 

 and during the breeding-season, was not much seen. Its song was a long, smooth 

 trill, pitched higher, but possessing more tone than that of the Grasshopper-Warbler, 

 and, like that bird's, chiefly heard early in the morning or at nightfall." 



Colonel Irby, describing nests found in Andalucia, says {The Ornithology of 

 the Straits of Gibraltar, 2nd ed., p. 60): "The nests were all alike, loosely and 

 clumsily built, solely constructed of dead sledge, often placed so close to the water 

 that the base was wet ; they were always in the open marsh, none, that we saw, 

 under bushes or in tall rushes or reeds, and the single nest that was not in sedges 

 was in a tuft of the spiky rush so common in wet ground." 



The eggs, varying in number from four to five, are whitish, speckled with small 

 spots of brown. 



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