Our summer migrants Author:James Edmund Harting Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE WOOD WARBLER. (Phylloscopus sibilatrix.) LTHOUGH often taken to comprehend - every species of warbler, Professor Newton has recently shown1 that ... more »the genus Sylvia of Latham should be restricted to the group of fruit-eating warblers next to be described, and that the generic term which has priority for the willow wren group is Phylloscopus of Boie. From its larger size, brighter colour, and finer song, the Wood Warbler deserves to be firstnoticed; and the first step should be to distinguish it from its congeners. Perhaps none of the small insectivorous birds have been more confounded one with another than have the members of this group, not only by observers of the living birds, but by naturalists with skins of each before them. Taking the three species which annually visit us—i. e., the Wood Warbler, the Willow Warbler, and the Chiff-chaff- it will be found on comparison that they differ in size as follows— 1 Yarrell, "Hist. Brit. Birds," 4th ed. vol. i. pp. 427, 442. Length. Wing. Tarsus. Wood Warbler . 5-2 in. . 3'oin. . 07 in. Willow Warbler . 5-0 . 2'6 . 07 Chiff-chaff. . . 47 . 2-4 . o'6 Not only is the Wood Warbler the largest of the three, but it has comparatively the longest wings and the longest legs. The wings, when closed, cover three-fourths of the tail. In the Willow Wren, under the same circumstances, less than half the tail is hidden. The Chiff- chaff's wing is shorter again: In my edition of White's " Selborne," founded upon that of Ben- nett, 1875, pp. 56, 57, will be found a long footnote on the subject, with woodcuts illustrating the comparative form of the wing in these three birds. Mr. Blake-Knox, in "The Zoologist" for 1866, p. 300, has pointed to the second quill-feather, depicted in a sketch accompanying his communica...« less