Page:The British Warblers A History with Problems of Their Lives - 1 of 9.djvu/47

 It visits parts of Switzerland, breeding regularly in the low regions of the basin of the River Aar and the River Thur, in the districts near Geneva, and in the valleys of Hasli and Ursern. On migration it is found as high as the Alpine regions.

Italy is little frequented, and the bird appears to confine itself principally to the north-western districts, where it is found in Lombardy, in the Brembana Valley, Piedmont, Liguria, the neighbourhood of Nizza, and Modena. Little is known of it in Central and Southern Italy, but it has been found near Florence in September. From Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Greece, and the Balkan provinces there are no records.

In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy it is not common, principally inhabiting the Hansag swamp, and localities in Pozsony, Feher, Also-Feher and Hunyad. As we get further east, towards Galicia, it again becomes common, and leaving Austria, we come to what is apparently its largest breeding ground—the Russian Empire.

Commencing with Poland, we find it common, especially in Lublin, then proceeding north, not rare in the Baltic provinces, the provinces of Pskov and St. Petersburg; still further north we trace it to the south-east of Lake Onega and Ustiug Weliki in the province of Vologda. It is more numerous and generally distributed in the central provinces of Jaroslav, where it breeds on the islands of the Volga and near Rostov, Tver, Moscow, Smolensk, and Tula, also in the district lying between the Rivers Volga and Oka, but from the middle Volga valley there are no records. In the more southern parts it is found in the provinces of Kiev, Volhynia, Tchernigov, also along the banks of the Rivers Bug and Dnieper. In the Ural district it is commonly distributed round Bogoslovsk, the tributaries of the River Sosva, and in the province of Perm; it is also found in the Orenburg district at the base of the south-west Ural Mountains, in the plains of the Rivers Sakmara and Ilek, and in the middle valley of the River Ural. In the Caucasus it is common in