138 THE LIVING ANIMALS OL THE WORLD 
Photo by Scholastic Photo, Co, 
YOUNG THRUSH 
T/iis photograph %ho^% the mud-lined nest 
the spring migrants, remaining to nest, 
and leaving again in tire autumn. Some, 
as the Black-cap, White throat. Chiff- 
chaff, Garden-, Willow-, and Wood- 
warblers, frequent woods, hedgerows, 
and gardens; whilst others, as the Sedge- 
and Reed-warblers, are found only 
near water affording sufficient shelter in 
the shape of reed-banks or osier-planta- 
tions. 
The Black-cap and Garden-warb- 
ler rank as songsters of no mean talent, 
being held second only to the nightingale. 
As if by common consent, the two former 
never clash, so that where black-caps are 
common there are few garden-warblers, and 
vice versa. 
Most of these birds build a typical 
cup-shaped nest of dried grasses, lined 
with finer materials, and placed near the 
ground ; but that of the Reed-WARBLER 
is a most beautiful structure, the dried 
grass of which it is made being woven 
around some three or four reed-stems, 
making it seem as if the latter had, in 
growing up, pierced the sides of tlm nest 
and are then captured and sold in large numbers 
for food in the Russian markets, and occasionally 
are sent over to London. 
Passing over a small group of comparatively 
uninteresting American birds known as “ Green- 
lets,” we come to the WarbleR-S, a group which 
constitutes one of the largest families of birds of 
the Old World. The species included in this 
family vary greatly in their characters, so that 
it is by no means easy to give diagnostic char- 
acters, whereby they may be readily distinguished 
from the P'ly-catchers on the one hand or the 
Thrushes on the other. The Thrushes, however, 
as a group, may be distinguished from the 
Warblers by the circumstance that in the former 
the young have a distinctive spotted plumage, 
differing from that of the adults, while the 
young of the Warblers are not so marked, 
their plumage differing but little from that of 
their parents. 
More than twenty species of warblers are 
included amongst British birds. Although some 
of them are but rare and accidental visitors to 
Britain, others are amongst the commonest of 
Photo by J, T. Newman 
blackbird 
The male and female are quite different one from another., and in this respect 
differ from the Thrushes, in which the sexes are alike 
