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Updated: May 6, 2025
Neither the Marsh-Warbler nor the Reed-Warbler will tolerate strangers within the small space of ground over which they exercise dominion. Of the two, the Marsh-Warbler is perhaps the more pugnacious, and will attack any other Warbler that approaches too closely; Whitethroats are often pursued and driven away, and less frequently, Garden-Warblers.
On the 30th May, a nest of Whitethroats three days old was removed at 7.15 A.M. The wind was northerly and the weather fine, but the temperature low 50° F. At 8.15 A.M. the birds showed no sign of life.
In a winter stroll by the upper Thames, the absence of the birds which flocked along the banks in summer and spring, when the May was in blossom and the willow covered with cotton fleck, is among the first seasonal changes noticed. The chiff-chaffs, turtledoves, sedge-warblers, whitethroats, coots, sandpipers, and all the little river birds are gone.
And if we are satisfied that the fighting in the one case is purposive, so, too, must we regard it as having some biological purpose to serve in the other. But the Garden-Warbler is not the only bird that acts as a stimulus to the instinct of the Blackcap; Whitethroats are often attacked, and the Chiffchaff is a source of irritation.
Details of these experiments will be found at the end of the chapter. The experiments with the Blackbirds and the Whitethroats gave the most interesting results.
No fruit-bearing trees were there to invite the birds in summer; nor, so far as I could see, any berry-bearing shrubs such as birds enjoy, nor any weed patches to attract the flocks of Whitethroats and Juncos that come drifting southward with the falling leaves of autumn. Had my visit to this place been made late in April, or in May, there might have been a different tale to tell.
But on account of their violence, or their novelty, or because the absence of a female was beyond question, some battles stand out in one's memory more prominently than others. An instance of this was a struggle between two Whitethroats which happened in the latter part of April and lasted for three successive days.
Among the birds of this kind which pass up the river, but of which only a few pairs stay to breed on the eyot, are whitethroats, blackcaps, chiff-chaffs, and, I believe, nightingales. One beautiful early morning in spring I could not believe my ears, but I heard a nightingale in a bush by the side of the garden overhanging the river. It sang for about an hour, "practising" as nightingales do.
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