iHE WARBLERS* 
1§5 
hedge, and, with a flick of his tail, disappears on the other 
side. The feathers of the head are also much puffed out, 
giving the appearance of its being too big for the little body of 
the bird. The female is less frequently seen, as she keeps 
much more to the lower parts of the hedges, or to the thickest 
brambles and bushes. The male, on the other hand, often 
springs up into the air like a Tit-Lark, and descends singing to 
his perch, often in a jerking manner, with his tail expanded. 
In the autumn, like other Warblers, it devours numbers of cur- 
rants and berries, and Mr. Dixon states that it also eats the 
corn when it is in a soft and milky state. We have known 
them to work great havoc in a row of peas. During the 
summer, however, the food of the Whitethroat consists almost 
entirely of insects, and it eats large numbers of Daddy Longlegs, 
and it may often be observed flying off from its perch and 
catching insects in the air, like a Flycatcher. 
Nest. — A veiy slight, but deep, structure, composed of dry 
grass-stems and bents, and lined with thin roots and horse-hair. 
It is generally placed low down in the overhanging boughs of a 
white-thorn or other bush, or amongst the smaller bramble- 
stems, or, as said before, suspended in the nettles. 
Eggs. — From four to six in number. The ground-colour 
varies much. The predominant colour is olive, the ground- 
colour of the egg being brownish-white, thickly speckled with 
olive-brown, and very plainly spotted with violet-grey, of which 
the underlying spots are really composed, but in many instances 
these are so distinct that they appear to constitute the over- 
lying spots, and are generally congregated at the larger end of 
the egg. Other types of eggs have the ground-colour greenish- 
white, and the spots arc greenish-brown and violet-grey, never 
so strongly indicated as in the first-mentioned variety. A 
rarer type of egg has the ground-colour light green, with tiry 
brown dots and larger markings of violet-grey. One remark- 
able clutch from Epping Forest, in the Salrin-Godman collec- 
tion, has the greenish-white ground-colour of the eggs almost 
entirely obscured by blotches of reddish-brown, while the 
darker markings are almost black, and arc congregrated at the 
large end of the egg in great blotches. Axis, o j-oS inch; 
diam., o'5-o'6. 
