52 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
harsh notes, by the length to which it is often kept 
up without a break, and the extreme force and 
earnestness, for such a small bird, with which it is 
delivered. Most country people know the way in 
which, if the Sedge Warbler is silent at the mo- 
ment, it will spring into song like an alarm-clock 
if man or beast disturbs it by pushing into its 
thickets, or a stick or stone is flung into the 
undergrowth. It is often heard singing at night, 
and is therefore one of the birds which are often 
mistaken for the Nightingale, though the Night- 
ingale stops singing altogether many weeks be- 
fore the Sedge Warbler does. Though it is much 
more often heard than seen, it is not difficult to 
get a glimpse of the Sedge Warbler among the 
thickets and willows which it haunts. An active 
and vigorous little bird in all its movements, it is 
coloured whitish-yellow beneath and darker reddish- 
brown above, and at close quarters it will be re- 
cognised by the yellow stripe over the eye and the 
rounded end to its tail. It begins to nest rather 
late, generally after the middle of May, for it 
waits until the streamside herbage has grown high 
enough to give it proper cover. Sometimes it 
builds in a mass of dry down-beaten sedges, as its 
name seems particularly to indicate, but much more 
often in the thick of the growing bushes and 
herbage, rarely more than four feet from the 
