416 
REED SPARROW. 
mores dusky, edged with tawny red ; the tail is black ; the two middle 
feathers deeply bordered with rufous, the two exterior on each side 
marked obliquely with white towards the end ; the shafts and tips black. 
The female is rather less ; the head is rufous-brown, streaked with 
dusky ; from each side of the under mandible a dusky line passes under 
the neck, where it joins and forms a bed of that colour ; behind the 
eye a light coloured stroke ; the breast is streaked with reddish-brown ; 
the rump plain olive-brown ; it has no white ring round the head, as 
in the male. 
The young male birds do not assume their full black head till the 
ensuing spring ; nor is the white ring so conspicuous. 
It is somewhat extraordinary that the manners and habits of so 
common a bird should remain so long in obscurity ; even modern 
authors tell us it is a song bird, that it sings after sunset ; and describe 
its nest to be suspended over the water, fastened between three or four 
reeds. There can be no doubt, however, that the nest, as well as the 
song of the sedge bird, have been taken and confounded for those of the 
Reed Sparrow ; for as they both frequent the same places in the breeding 
season, that elegant little warbler is pouring forth its varied notes con- 
cealed in the thickest part of a bush, while this is conspicuously perched 
above, whose tune is not deserving the name of song, consisting only 
of two notes, the first repeated three or four times, the last single and 
more sharp. This inharmonious tune it continues to deliver with 
small intervals from the same spray, for a great while together, when 
the female is sitting. 
* This account of the song agrees precisely with my own observation 
of thousands of these birds, which I have heard sing in their native 
haunts ; but Syme says he knows its song to be very superior to that 
of any other British species of bunting’, exclusive of the snow flake, 
which he never heard. Bolton also says, the cock sings pleasantly, 
his notes being much finer and more pleasing than those of any other 
bird of the same family.* 
The nest is most commonly placed on the ground near water ; some- 
times it builds in a bush some distance from the ground ; at other 
times in high grass, reeds, sedge, or the like, and even in furze at a 
considerable distance from any water ; in all these situations we have 
met with it, but never fastened or suspended, as authors have related. 
* These have evidently mistaken for this, the nest of the sedge bird 
(^Curruca salicaria, Fleming.) Syme says, it is generally placed 
amongst clumps or bunches of long grass, willow roots, or tufts of 
reeds or rushes. But though I have met with a very considerable 
