visit in the summer, when he would be well repaid by the novelty of the country, and otherwise pleased. 
Besides the Furze-Wren, the graceful Pewet will dippingly salute him while rambling over the common, 
the Cuckoo’s note will resound in several directions, and the Stone-Chat will utter his clacking note from the 
topmost branch of the whin. The Wheatear and the Pipit will be almost the only other birds he will meet 
with ; perchance, however, a Black Cock may rise at his feet, and spin away across the moor ; but should 
our young friend remain until nightfall, which I should not recommend, he will be serenaded by the jarring 
note of the Goatsucker while sitting on one of the numerous turf-cocks. 
The habits of the Dartford Warbler are shy, recluse, and mouse-like; the thickest beds of the whin or 
furze are its usual place of resort; but it not unfrequently affects open beds of heath, particularly such as 
are high enough to shroud it from observation. In the early morn, and often during the day, the male 
ascends to the highest spray and there pours forth his little warbling song ; now and then it may be seen 
bobbingly flying from place to place, each flight terminating in a dive down into the thickest part of the 
covert, through which it creeps and runs with great quickness and facility. Were I to compare its actions 
and manners with those of any other English bird, it would be with those of the Whitethroat. Whoever 
is acquainted with that species and its short jerking flight, may form a very just idea of the manners of 
the Furze-Wren ; perhaps I have said enough on this feature of the bird’s economy, particularly as I subjoin 
the descriptive notes of Rusticus of Godaiming ; let me add, however, that there is little difference in the 
colouring of the sexes, but the female may always be distinguished by the lighter hue of her under surface. 
“ Its habits,” says Rusticus, “ are very like those of the Little Wren ; and when the leaves are off the trees, 
and the dull winter winds have driven the summer birds to the olive-gardens of Spain, or across the Straits, 
the Furze-Wren, as it is called, is in the height of his enjoyment. I have seen them by dozens skipping 
about the furze, lighting for a moment on the very point of the sprigs, and instantly diving out of sight again, 
singing out their angry impatient ditty, for ever the same. Mounted on a tall horse, and riding quietly along 
the outside, while the fox-hounds have been drawing the furze-fields, I have seen the tops of the furze quite 
alive with these birds. They prefer those places where the furze is very thick, high, and difficult to get into.” 
The nest is built sometimes in a furze bush, at others among the standing heath on the Common, and 
is generally so placed as to be shrouded from observation. One given to me by Mr. Alfred Crowley, of 
Croydon, was of a deep cup-shaped form, substantially built on the exterior with dry grass, straw, moss, and 
lichens ; internally it was lined with very fine roots, and a small quantity of very coarse horse-hair. 
The nest taken by myself and my son, at Churt, in May 1861, was built in a bunch of thick heather, to 
the many stems of which the nest was looped, much in the same manner as that of the Reed-Wren is to the 
reeds. The exterior was composed of the finer twigs of dead heather neatly woven together, and the 
interior w'as lined with the upper portions of the dry stems of grasses intermixed with a little wool. 
The number of the eggs varies in about the following ratio : if 80 nests be examined, 30 of them will 
contain three, 48 will have four, and the remaining 2 five : so says Smither, and nobody knows better. 
The general colour of the eggs is a very light tinge of green, speckled all over with olive-brown and ashy 
grey, the markings being most numerous, and forming a zone, at the larger end. 
Colonel Montagu says that some young birds brought up from the nest “ began to sing with the appearance 
of their first mature feathers, and continued in song all the month of October, sometimes with scarcely any 
intermission, for several hours together ; the notes were delivered in a hurried manner, and in a much 
lower tone than that of the old birds in their natural haunts.” 
Tlie food of the Furze-Wren consists in summer of small dipterous and other Insects, and in winter 
of minute Coleoptera and the small seeds of the heather. 
Head, all the upper surface and wing-coverts very dark olive washed with grey on the ear-coverts ; edge 
of the shoulder and spurious wing white ; primaries and tail brownish black, the former margined with olive, 
the latter narrowly margined and tipped with grey, particularly the outer feathers ; under surface chestnut- 
brown, the chin speckled with white, and the centre of the abdomen grey ; irldes golden hazel ; eyelash 
very rich orange-red ; bill yellow at the gape, passing into yellow-brown on the lower mandible ; culmen and 
tips of both mandibles blackish brown. In the autumn the colouring of the plumage is paler, and the grey 
of the abdomen more extensive. 
The Plate represents the two sexes of the natural size, on a branch of the Furze bush, Ulex Europceus. 
