THE REED-WARBLERS. 
221 
main. His alarm note is a tek-tek-tek, often heard m an angry 
tone. In its habits the bird combines the actions ot a 1 it with 
those of a Flycatcher, feeding for the most part on insects ; but 
in autumn it is said to vary the diet with ripe cherries, currants, 
elderberries, etc.” 
Neat. — Described by Mr. Seebohm as a very beautiful struc- 
ture generally built in the fork of a small tree, eight or ten feet 
from the ground. He says that the nest is quite as handsome 
as that of the Chaffinch, but slightly smaller, more slender, and 
deeper. It is composed of dry grass, deftly interwoven with 
moss, wool, spiders’ webs, thistle-down, strips of bark, and 
lichens, lined with fine roots, grass-stalks, and horsehair. 
Eggs.— Four or five in number, rarely six. They are pinkish 
stone-colour, with spots, and lines, and scratches, of black or 
purplish-brown. The clutches vary in the extent of the spot- 
ting some being sprinkled with fine dots, while others are more 
boldly spotted, like those of a Bunting. In the latter small 
underlying dots are visible, but in the smaller spotted eggs 
the underlying dots are scarcely perceptible. Axis, 0-65 075 
inch ; diam., o‘S-o’6. 
THE RE EU -WARBLERS. GENUS ACROCEPIIALUS. 
Acrocephalus, Naum., Nat. Land- und Wasser- Vog., nordl. 
Deutschl. Nachtr., iv., p. 199 (1811). 
Type, A. turdoides (Meyer). 
The Reed- Warblers form a very natural group of birds, found 
in nearly every portion of the Old World, lhey have a laiger 
bill than the majority of the Warblers, having this organ rather 
depressed and widened near the base, the rictal bristles strong 
and well-developed, and arranged in a horizontal row. 1 he 
wing and tail are about equal in length, the latter being more 
rounded than in Ilypolais, but not so much as in Locuxiella. 
The outer feathers are more than three-quarters the length of 
the tail. The first, or bastard, primary is so small that it does 
not reach to the tip of the primary-coverts, and is less than a 
third of the length of the second. It is, however, a little 
longer in birds of the year. 
