In the summer of 1900 I found the lesser whitethroat--the better whitethroat I should prefer to call it--in extraordinary abundance in the large unkept hedges east of the woods in the parishes of Fawley and Exbury. Hitherto I had always found this species everywhere thinly distributed; here it was abundant as the reed-warblers along the dykes in the flat grass-lands on the Somerset coast, and like the reed-warblers in the reed- and sedge-grown ditches and streams, each pair of whitethroats had its own part of the hedge; so that in walking in a lane when you left one singing behind you heard his next neighbour singing at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards farther on, and from end to end of the great hedge you had that continuous beautiful low warble at your side, and sometimes on both sides. The loud brief song of this whitethroat, which resembles the first part of a chaffinch's song, is a pleasant sound and nothing more; the low warbling, which runs on without a break for forty or fifty seconds, or longer, is the beautiful song, and resembles the low continuous warble of the blackcap, but is more varied, and has one sound which is unique in the songs of British birds. This is a note repeated two or three times at intervals in the course of the song, of an excessive sharpness, unlike any other bird sound, but comparable to the silvery shrilling of the great {61} green grasshopper--excessively sharp, yet musical. The bird emits this same silver shrill note when angry and when fighting, but it is then louder and not so musical, and resembles the sharpest sounds made by bats and other small mammals when excited. One day I sat down near a hedge, where an old half-dead oak stood among the thorns and brambles, and just by the oak a lesser whitethroat was moving about and singing. Out among the furze bushes at some distance from the hedge a common whitethroat was singing, flitting and darting from bush to bush, rising at intervals into the air and dropping again into the furze; but by-and-by he rose to a greater height to pour out his mad confused strain in the air, then sloped away to the hedge and settled, still singing, on the dead branch of the oak. Up rose the lesser whitethroat and attacked it with extreme fury, rising to a height of two or three feet and dashing repeatedly at it, looking like a miniature kestrel or hobby; and every time it descended the other ducked his head and flattened himself on the branch, only to rise again, crest erect and throat puffed out, still pouring forth its defiant song. As long as this lasted the attacking bird emitted his piercing metallic anger-note, rapidly and continuously, like the clicking of steel machinery.