BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
63 
There are a number of natural sounds that 
resemble more or less closely the most unbird-like 
note of this warbler — cicada, rattlesnake, and some 
batrachians. Some grasshoppers perhaps come 
nearest to it; but the most sustained current of 
sound emitted by the insect is short compared to 
the warbler's strain, also the vibrations are very 
much more rapid, and not heard as vibrations, and 
the same effect is not produced. 
Just out of hearing of the grasshopper warblers 
there was a good-sized pool of water on the common, 
probably an old gravel-pit, its bottom now over- 
grown with rushes. A sedge- warbler, the only one 
I saw, lived in the masses of bramble and oforse 
on its banks ; and birds of so many kinds came to 
it to drink and bathe, that the pool became a 
favourite spot with me. One evening, just before 
sunset, as I lingered near it, a pied wagtail darted 
out of some low scrub at my feet and fluttered, as 
if wounded, over the turf for a space of ten or 
twelve yards before flying away. Not many 
minutes after seeing the wagtail, a reed-bunting — 
a bird which I had not previously observed on the 
common — flew down and alighted on a bush a few 
yards from me, holding a white crescent-shaped 
larva in its beak. I stood still to watch it, but 
certainly not expecting to see its nest and young ; 
for, as a rule, a bird with food in its beak will sit 
