I have sometimes heard persons express their inability to distinguish these two species apart; but there ought to be no difficulty in the matter. The Sedge Warbler has a variegated back, with a conspicuous light streak over the eye; the Reed Warbler has a uniform pale-brown back, and the superciliary streak very faint. The actions of the two birds are not unlike, but their nesting habits are very different. _S. phragmitis_ builds on the ground or very near it, making a nest of moss and grass, lined with horsehair, and laying five or six eggs of a yellowish-brown colour, with a few scattered spots or lines of a darker colour at the larger end. _S. strepera_ suspends its nest between reed stems or twigs, round which a great portion of the nest is woven, and the entire structure is much larger, deeper, and more cup-shaped. The materials are long grasses, flowering reed-heads, and wool, the lining being composed of fine grass and hair. The eggs, five or six in number, are greenish-white speckled with ash-green and pale-brown. The habit which the Reed Warbler has of occasionally nesting at a distance from water is now probably well known to ornithologists. It was noticed by Mr. R. Mitford in the “Zoologist” for 1864 (p. 9109), and subsequently by the writer, in “The Birds of Middlesex,” 1866 (p. 47), and by the author of “The Birds of Berks and Bucks,” 1868 (p. 81). Mr. B. Hamilton Booth, of Malton, Yorkshire, communicated the fact of his having discovered a nest of the Reed Warbler in a yew tree, built so as to include three or four twigs as if they were reeds, and placed at a height of at least twelve or fourteen feet from the ground. He accounted for the nest being built at such a height, and in a tree, on the supposition that the first nest had been destroyed by the rats which infest the place, and the birds had taken a precaution for future safety. [Illustration: GRASSHOPPER WARBLER] THE GRASSHOPPER WARBLER. (_Salicaria locustella._)