The eggs, numbering four or five, rarely six, vary in ground colour from white to greenish-white or yellowish-stone-grey, are spotted, blotched, and clouded with underlying markings of ash-grey and buffish-brown. Some specimens are marbled with brown, and it is often a difficult matter to distinguish others from those laid by the Blackcap.
GARDEN WARBLER ON NEST.
By most people the Garden Warbler is considered to rank next to the Blackcap as a melodist, and the songs of the two species resemble each other so much that I have known a naturalist with a good ear and wide experience unable to say definitely which bird was singing until he got a sight of the vocalist. Mr. Hudson says that “the Garden Warbler’s song is like a good imitation of the Blackcap’s, but it is not so powerful and brilliant. Some of its notes possess the same bright, pure, musical quality, but they are hurriedly delivered, shorter, more broken up, as it were. On the other hand, to compensate for this inferior character there is more of it; the bird, sitting concealed among the clustering leaves, will sing by the hour, his rapid, warbled strain sometimes lasting for several minutes without a break.”
GARDEN WARBLER’S NEST AND EGGS.
The song is certainly softer, and lacks something of the wild dash and irregularity of that of its relative, but some of its notes are quite as sweet, and this fact strikes the listener, particularly when the bird is heard close at hand in some quiet, out-of-the-way corner where other vocalists do not interfere with the full enjoyment of the Garden Warbler’s song.
The alarm note is a harsh “tech,” sounding something like the noise made by two pebbles being struck together.
