Marsh Warbler in Kent.

 

The nest, found near Minster

 

 

 

24 June 1905, Minster-in-Thanet

…… The next morning I returned and was greeted by the same beautiful song, but once again I failed to obtain anything more than a momentary glimpse of the bird, which seemed to be very shy and always frequented the upper branches of the trees. Now all this time I had been arguing with myself. If the bird was an Icterine Warbler, it was probably a migrant and ought to be killed in the cause of science ...... Science? What cruelties have been enacted under cover of this empty word. So it was that I fought down my better nature and towards midday I actually went to the farmhouse to borrow a gun that I might murder the little stranger. Providentially the bird ceased its melody as soon as the weapon was in my hand and did not afterwards come in sight. In the evening I went to London.

          In the afternoon of the 24th I returned from town and made all haste to visit the haunt of the strange warbler. Despite the general clamour of bird voices I found the copse disappointingly silent as I listened in vain for the loud mimicking melody of the unknown vocalist. I waited patiently for some time, and then, despairing of seeing or hearing the bird again, I commenced a systematic search for nests, going carefully through the spinney. The undergrowth was so dense that this was no light task and it was only by struggling and pushing that I could proceed at all. My efforts were at first but poorly rewarded and for some time I discovered nothing, but suddenly, as I parted the tangled vegetation in front of me I exposed to view a beautiful nest, the like of which I had never before seen. In the cup lay five bluish eggs, spotted about the larger end, and these I was able to recognise as belonging to the Marsh Warbler, a bird previously unknown in Kent. At the sight of these eggs my heart leapt with the sudden joy of discovery and I could realise the feelings of a gold-digger who stumbles, haphazard, across a nugget of untold value. So my stranger was not an Icterine Warbler after all! How very very thankful I now felt that I had been unsuccessful in my murderous designs – that the bird still lived to sing its exquisite song.

 

 

In old age he wrote that he regarded this find as one of the ornithological highlight of his life.