45 
BIRDS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
Harley says : — “ Nidification commences in IMay, if the spring be favourable 
and mild. The nest is rather slovenly and loosely put together, which, when 
completed, may easily be mistaken for that of the Whitethroat. The fabric is 
slenderly built, and composed of goose-grass mainly, lined with horse-hair. It 
is placed generally among nettles, long grass, and tall plants ; but more frequently 
we have met with it fixed to the dwarfed branches of the sloe, or rough twigs 
of the wild raspberry. The species lays four, and sometimes five, eggs, of a 
greenish-white colour, spotted and streaked with markings of dark brown.” They 
are rather difficult to distinguish from those of the preceding species, but are 
well differentiated by Jlr. H. E. Dresser, F.L.S., F.Z.S., etc., in his magnificent 
‘ History of the Birds of Europe.’ The Museum possesses a nest and four eggs, 
found at Knighton in 1883, and presented by Master Ellis. Mr. H. S. Davenport 
remarks that this bird was much less common during the three years ending 
1887 than in 1884, when he found so many as five nests in the course of an 
hour’s ramble about Keythorpe. The Garden-Warbler, he says, is the latest 
builder of all the Warbler tribe known in Leicestershire. 
In Eutland. — A summer migrant, generally distributed, and breeding, but, 
as Lord Gainsborough pertinently remarks, liable to be overlooked from its 
similarity to the Whitethroat. Mr. Horn found several nests during the last 
week of May, and the first week of June, 1886. 
HARTFORD WARBLER. Melizophilus unclatus (Boddaert). 
This bird does not occur in the count}", and is only now mentioned because 
it has, by error, been included in local lists as having occurred at “ Melton 
iMowbray, in Leicestershire ” (see each edition of Yarrell, including the fourth 
— vol. i., p. 399 — also IMacgillivray, IMorris, and Dresser, in his ‘Birds of Europe,’ 
quoting Yarrell). Harley, however, who wi'ote a long MS. article about it, 
contradicted this, and said : — “ Mr. Yarrell’s informant * told me that the example 
of Hartford Warbler which he had described to him as having been captured in 
the county of Leicester, was brought to him by a countryman, who subsequently 
admitted that he obtained it in Cambridgeshire,” and further remarked : — 
“ h'aunists and monographers cannot be too careful in the narration of the 
statements of country-people and hinds, who are frequently very credulous and 
easily misled. It was the absence of genuine investigation and research which 
has filled to suffusion our natural history literature with so much fable and 
with so few facts.” No one knows better than I, the full force of these remarks 
of Harley’s ! 
In the “ Bickley Collection” of British Birds in the Museum, is a specimen 
mounted by the late Mr. R. Widdowson, said by Mr. Macaulay (‘Mid. Nat.,’ 1882, 
p. 63), to have been shot in Nottinghamshire. This is evidently a mistake of 
* No doubt, the late Mr. R. Widdowson, who was Avell known to both Harley and 
Yarrell. 
