54 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
GRASSHOPPER WARBLER. 
{Locus tella n^via.) 
Reel-bird. — The Grasshopper Warbler Is the 
chief of the numerous company of birds which are 
much heard and little seen. Probably no bird shows 
itself so seldom among the deep grass, brambles, and 
green luxuriant undergrowth of its chosen haunts, 
while in localities where it is present few notes are 
more likely to excite the curiosity of the hearer than 
its long-continued, machine-like whirring, which 
is especially conspicuous after sunset, when most 
other birds are silent. The resemblance of this 
noise to the chirping of a grasshopper has of 
course given the bird its name ; but it is more 
rapid and continuous, while it lasts, than the sound 
usually made by grasshoppers and crickets, though 
more musical and bird-like than the winding of 
the fisherman's reel, which is often heard at the 
same time with it in the same streamside meadows, 
when the trout are rising well on a warm, still 
evening about midsummer. The bird is found on 
commons and hilly ground, as well as in the fringes 
of the low-lying hayfields ; but I have nowhere 
heard it reeling away in such numbers on a fine 
June evening as in the moist green meadows of the 
Dutch island of Walcheren. It is a long, lithe 
