The eggs are four or five in number, greenish white in colour, clouded, blotched, and freckled with dark olive and ash-grey. Sedge-Warbler. Acrocephalus phragmitis. Upper plumage greyish brown; above the eye a broad, distinct, yellowish white streak; under plumage pale buff; throat white. Length, four inches and three-quarters. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--SEDGE-WARBLER. ⅓ natural size.] * * * * * The sedge-warbler, usually called sedge-bird, and in some localities river-chat, is a common species in most waterside places where there are reed-beds and willows; it also frequents rough hedges and bramble and furze bushes in the neighbourhood of a watercourse. Sometimes, but not often, it is found breeding at a considerable distance from a stream. It comes to us in April, and is a most active and lively little creature. Although not shy of man, it is less easy to observe than any other species in this group, except, perhaps, the grasshopper warbler, on account of its excessive restlessness, the rapidity of its movements, and its habit of keeping near the surface in the close reeds and bushes it lives in. The grasshopper warbler, and, indeed, most small birds that inhabit bushes, love to come to the surface to sing; the sedge-warbler sings much as he hurries about in search of his food, which consists of small caterpillars and slugs, and aquatic insects. Occasionally the restless little yellowish brown figure appears for a moment or two near the top of a bush, and then vanishes again.