REED-WARBLER 
265 
REED-WARBLER 
Conopoderas australis australis 
Here is another familiar bird ; without question our 
finest native songster, and probably the only one of 
our birds which our European friends would admit 
to have any song at all. 
It is an infra-Australian migrant. How far into 
the continent it wanders in winter we do not yet 
know, but it appears with regularity in the Geelong 
district in the first warm days of spring. The first 
arrivals chirp from the reed-beds along the Moorabool, 
at Fyansford, in the earliest days of September ; after 
that their numbers increase till, in mid-October, 
when nesting has fairly commenced, every patch of 
reeds below the junction of the rivers has at least 
its pair of birds. They go farther up the Barwon 
than its sister stream, and are plentiful as far as Ceres 
Bridge, just below which certain reedy waterholes 
on the river-flat are crowded with the Reed-warblers, 
and a great volume of happy song and busy nest- 
building chuckling pours without intermission from 
dawn to dark in the early summer days. 
The bird is not difficult to identify, for it is the 
only small bird which inhabits the reed-beds of the 
upper reaches ; it is dark brown above, lighter below, 
with whitish throat, and is usually seen flying hur- 
riedly, with a quick fluttering motion, close to the 
water from one patch of reeds to another. 
