tle that may
buzz through its cage, for the active little bird will have it in a
moment, and after a few sharp snaps of the beak there is quite an end of
the bluebottle. Daddy long-legs, too, are favourite morsels, and after a
little beating about disappear down the bird's throat--legs, wings, and
all, without any difficulty. The indigestible parts are afterwards cast
up in pellets in the same manner as with Hawks.

I have never seen the nearly-allied and very similar Marsh Warbler,
_Acrocephalus palustris_, in Guernsey, but, as it may occasionally
occur, it may be as well perhaps to point out what little distinction
there is between the species. This seems to me to consist chiefly in the
difference of colour, the Reed Warbler, _Acrocephalus streperus_, at all
ages and in all states of plumage, being a warmer, redder brown than
_Acrocephalus palustris_, which is always more or less tinged with
green. The legs in _A. streperus_ are always darker than in _A.
palustris_; the beak also in _A. palustris_ seems rather broader at the
base and thicker. This bird also has a whitish streak over the eye,
which seems wanting in _A. streperus._ These distinctions seem to me
always to hold, good even in specimens which have been kept some time
and have faded to what has now generally got the name of "Museum
colour."

Mr. Dresser, in his 'Birds of Europe,' points out another distinction
which no doubt is a good one in adult birds with their quills fully
grown, but fails in young birds and in adults soon after the moult,
before the quills are fully grown, and also before the moult if any
quills have been shed and not replaced. This distinction is that in _A.
streperus_ the second (that is the first long quill, for the first in
both species is merely rudimentary) is shorter than the fourth, and in
_A. palustris_ it is longer.

Though I think it not at all improbable that the Marsh Warbler,
_Acrocephalus palustris_, may occur in Guernsey, I should not expect to
find it so much in the wet reed-beds in the Grand Mare and at the Vale
pond as amongst the lilac bushes and ornamental shrubs in the gardens,
or in thick bramble bushes in hedgerows and places of that sort.

36. SEDGE WARBLER. _Acrocephalus schoenobaenus_, Linnaeus. French,
"Bee-fin phragmite."--The Sedge Warbler is by no means so common as the
Reed Warbler, though, like it, it is a summer visitant, and is quite as
local. I did not see any amongst the reeds which the Reed Wa