Part 14

Its song is very similar to that of the Meadow Pipit, and consists of a few short simple tinkling notes delivered with great cheerfulness, both upon the wing and whilst the bird is seated on some favourite rock. The call notes are also much like those of the Meadow Pipit.

Its nest is situated under old matted tufts of grass, overhanging pieces of rock, and in crevices, and is made of small pieces of dry seaweed, dead grass of various kinds, and a few horsehairs. Seaweed is not always present in the structure, and horsehair frequently absent when the bird is breeding on small islands where it is not procurable.

The eggs number from four to five, and have a grey ground colour slightly tinged with green or reddish-brown, closely spotted with dull greyish- and reddish-brown. They are occasionally marked on the larger end with one or two dark brown lines, and are larger than those of the other two members of the family breeding in our islands.

=THE GARDEN WARBLER.=

This species is about six inches in length, and on its upper parts of a light brown colour tinged with olive. Its under parts are brownish-white, darkest on the throat, chest, and sides. The absence of black or rusty brown on the top of the head always readily distinguishes it from the male or female Blackcap, and the colour of its throat and breast from either of the Whitethroats breeding in this country.

The Garden Warbler arrives in Britain about the end of April or commencement of May, and takes its departure for Africa in September and October.

It breeds sparingly in nearly all suitable parts of England except Cornwall, in Wales, in the South of Scotland, and occasionally in Ireland.

It generally builds its nest at some little height from the ground in thorn, briar, bramble, gooseberry, and other bushes growing in woods, clumps of trees in the proximity of streams, orchards, shrubberies, gardens, and hedgerows. Sometimes the structure, which is made of straws, blades of dead grass, and rootlets, lined with horsehair, is hung amongst nettles like that of a Whitethroat, or placed low down in long grass, mixed with taller wild plants.

The eggs, numbering four or five, rarely six, vary in ground colour from white to greenish-white or yellowish-stone-grey, are spotted, blotched, and clouded with underlying markings of ash-grey and buffish-brown. Some specimens are marbled with brown, and it is often a difficult matter to distinguish others from those laid by the Blackcap.

By most people the Garden Warbler is considered to rank next to the Blackcap as a melodist, and the songs of the two species resemble each other so much that I have known a naturalist with a good ear and wide experience unable to say definitely which bird was singing until he got a sight of the vocalist. Mr. Hudson says that “the Garden Warbler’s song is like a good imitation of the Blackcap’s, but it is not so powerful and brilliant. Some of its notes possess the same bright, pure, musical quality, but they are hurriedly delivered, shorter, more broken up, as it were. On the other hand, to compensate for this inferior character there is more of it; the bird, sitting concealed among the clustering leaves, will sing by the hour, his rapid, warbled strain sometimes lasting for several minutes without a break.”

The song is certainly softer, and lacks something of the wild dash and irregularity of that of its relative, but some of its notes are quite as sweet, and this fact strikes the listener, particularly when the bird is heard close at hand in some quiet, out-of-the-way corner where other vocalists do not interfere with the full enjoyment of the Garden Warbler’s song.

The alarm note is a harsh “tech,” sounding something like the noise made by two pebbles being struck together.

=THE MARSH WARBLER.=

On account of its great similarity of size, general appearance, and habitat, this rare British breeding species was long confounded by naturalists with the Reed Warbler.

The bird is greenish-olive on its upper parts, and lacks the rusty-red rump and sides of the commoner species. Its under parts are white, slightly tinged with yellowish-buff on the sides where the Reed Warbler is reddish buff. Its legs are pale flesh-brown in colour, whereas those of its relative are dark slaty-brown.

This species does not build its nest over water, whereas the one with which it has been confounded nearly always does so. The structure is composed of grass stems, and occasionally bits of moss intermixed on the outside with an inner lining of fine dead grass, and nearly always contains one or two black horsehairs. It is not so neatly finished as that of the Reed Warbler, and is generally suspended amongst nettles, Meadow Sweet, and Mugwood, the last plant appearing, where I have studied the species, to be first favourite.

The eggs, numbering from four to seven, are easily distinguished from those of the Reed Warbler by their lighter ground colour, which is greenish-white to greenish-blue clouded with underlying markings of grey and spotted with olive-brown.

It is as a singer of great sweetness and power, however, that the bird chiefly concerns us in this little work.

Last summer I spent several days in the West of England studying the species, and whilst I was lying hidden with my camera within three feet of a nest, had many opportunities of hearing the exquisite song of the male to perfection. Whilst the hen was sitting on the nest he frequently took up his station on a bramble spray just above and partly behind her, and regaled us both with the most wonderful programme of feathered music I have ever heard. As a mimic, the Marsh Warbler is unsurpassable.

Several times the specimen I listened to began his concert with the alarm cry of a Song Thrush, so loud and accurately rendered that I was completely deceived into thinking that I was listening to the notes of a disturbed member of that species. After a little pause he would reproduce the warbling notes of a Swallow, then the tut, tut, tut of a Blackbird, followed by the full, rich notes of the Nightingale. He could also reproduce the call note of a Common Partridge, and the sweet little song of a Linnet with equal fidelity. He always appeared to take great care not to mix his music, for, after finishing one piece, there was a noticeable pause before the commencement of another.

In the case of another pair of birds, that had been robbed, I noticed that the male sang much upon the wing as he flew back and forth from tree to tree across an osier-grown clay pit.

This species was first discovered in Somersetshire, and has been found breeding in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Cambridge.

It is a great pity that it should be so much persecuted by egg collectors, some of whom seem bent upon ruining its chances of ever becoming a regular British breeding species. To listen to the bird’s exquisite song for ten minutes is a far greater pleasure than to gaze for a month at its empty egg shells in a cabinet.

=THE REED BUNTING.=

The male Reed Bunting, or Reed Sparrow as it is frequently called, can hardly be mistaken for any other British bird on account of his conspicuous velvety black head and white collar running from the base of the bill down the sides of the neck some distance, and thence right round to the back of the head. His back is brownish-black, the feathers being broadly margined with reddish-brown and tawny grey; breast and under parts white, tinged and streaked with brown towards the sides. He is rather longer than the Common Sparrow, and shows a distinct white streak down either side of his tail when flying away from the observer.

His mate is smaller and has a brown instead of a black head.

Although certainly a singer, the Reed Bunting is not a great feathered musician, its song consisting of a few simple notes which the bird delivers with considerable persistency from the top of a reed or alder bush. It sounds like te, te, tu, te, diversified by an occasional discordant raytsh. Bechstein, the great German authority on cage birds, says that it is such an admirer of music that it will approach an instrument without fear, and testify to its joy by extending its wings and tail like a fan and shaking them.

The alarm cry is a sharp twitter, and when the male is afraid to approach the nest (either to take his turn in the labours of brooding or with food for the young) on account of some real or fancied danger, he persistently reiterates three melancholy notes that sound like “Don’t hit me.”