Grasshopper Warbler - 1894

Locustella navia

A summer visitor, scarce and very local.

We never detected the singular and not-to-be-mistaken song of this species at Stone Hall. The Rev. Clennell Wilkinson pointed out to us a field near his rectory at Castle Martin in a corner of which he had found a Grasshopper Warbler's nest several summers in succession, an instance of the attachment of the bird to a certain locality. Sir Hugh Owen has informed us that he has seen this species at Goodwick. Mr. Dix writes : " the first time I heard this bird in Wales was one afternoon in July, 1866 — it was just within Carmarthenshire, in a boggy place overgrown with alders and rushes — since then I have heard the bird near Whitechurch, in a similar locality. Last year two males came for a few evenings in July close to this house; "they were in two small clumps of blackthorn about forty yards from each other ; they began their peculiar whirring note about dark, when I have stood within a few feet of them without their being the least disturbed." The Grasshopper Warbler has been noted by the Rev. C. M. Phelps, near Tenby, and Mr. E. W. H. Blagg has informed us that he detected some there in June, 1887.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands