50 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
The bird seems particularly fond of meadow-sweet, 
hanging its nest in the thick of its rank, moist 
foliage in the shade of the willows at a height of 
two or three feet from the ground. No other bird 
builds in the same way among the stems and leaves 
of such soft and flimsy herbage, away (in most cases) 
from all other support, and only this peculiar 
method of hanging the nest from the stems could 
give sufficient support for safety. Four or five eggs 
are laid, larger than the Sedge or Reed Warbler's, 
and nearly as large as a fair-sized Hedge-sparrow's. 
They are greenish- white or pure pale green in ground 
colour, of which plenty is visible, and spotted in 
a free and open manner with greenish-brown and 
grey, as well as sprinkled here and there with 
smaller, darker dots and flecks both on the ground 
colour itself and upon the surface of the larger 
spots. They are very handsome eggs, and like no 
others found in England, though much resembling 
the Great Reed Warbler's, of continental Europe. 
Like the Reed Warbler, this bird arrives late in 
the spring, and is a late nester, the middle or end 
of June being the usual time for the eggs to be 
laid. Its known occurrences seem mainly to lie 
along a belt of country extending from the 
neighbourhood of Taunton in Somersetshire, by 
Bristol, Bath, and Stroud in Somerset and 
Gloucestershire, to Oxfordshire and the neighbour- 
