Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/92

66 bordering upon several weed-grown creeks which communicated with the river, Nightingales, Common Redstarts, and Tree Sparrows abounded. I twice got a sight of a Hobby in the neighbourhood of one of these quiet back-waters of the Sieg. Before entering the Rhine the Sieg flows parallel with that river for about a mile. The narrow strip of land thus formed, together with the adjacent foreshore of the Rhine, was most noticeable of all for the interest and variety of its bird-life. It is a sandy tract liable to be flooded, planted with osier and various other species of willow, amongst which are water-holes, from which the frogs raise an unearthly chorus. Bare enough in winter, it becomes a veritable jungle by the end of May, as with the growth of the willows comes an upgrowth of nettles and tall weeds of every kind, so matted together with hops, bindweed, and the parasitic dodder that by midsummer it is all but impassable. There are stony tracts at the water's edge, and here on May 8th some small waders drew my attention by a note which seemed unfamiliar. There were three of them in company with Common Sandpipers. It was extremely difficult to see them as they ran over the sand, which they nearly matched in colour, but the telescope soon showed me that I had made the acquaintance of the Little Ringed Plover. They once rose with quite a trill, at another time with a note more like that of their larger relative. I saw a Little Ringed Plover again at the same spot on June 10th, so that a pair may possibly have bred there; but on the 27th, owing, I suppose, to the melting of the Swiss snows, the river was high, and these stony tracts were under water.

A good many Blue-headed Yellow Wagtails were nesting amongst the willow-scrub. The males, in spring dress, perched upon the osier-sprays, or rose from the ground with shrill "chit-ip." Reed Buntings chirped and fluttered into cover. Here and there a patch of willow had been left uncut from the previous year, and every such patch seemed to shelter at least one pair of Reed Warblers. Here they skulked and sang, and here, in default of reeds, they made their nests. I noted that incubation lasted fourteen days. A nest at Nonnenwerth, on May 26th, was about six feet from the ground, in the fork of a small poplar; it was evidently intended to pass for one of the many knots of drift which had caught amongst the twigs. I