Warbler - British Trust for Ornithology

ACROCEPHALUS ARUNDINACEUS 45
in gardens on passage. Call-notes a harsh chak and deep churring
croak. Song of REED-WARBLER type but louder, and with
characteristic guttural, croaking karra-karra-karra-keek, gurk-gurkgurk
etc., interspersed with shriller piping notes. Sometimes
strongly mimetic, and uttered by night as well as by day, occasionally
from high exposedperch.
See photographs and notes by G. R. Mountfort, Brit. Birds, 44:
195-7, plates 25-9. Also field-notes in the same journal by I.
Houston and W. Robinson, 44: 202-4, and R. A. W. Reynolds,
45: 220-1. See plate VI.
Ageing. Adults have under parts sullied white in autumn, Istwinter
suffused with orange-bufE In adults, tips to olive-brown
scapulars, mantle and especially rump feathers are bleached and
grey, giving a blotchy effect, whereas young are bright rusty-bufE
1st-winter have whitish tips to flight-feathers (abraded in adults)
and a rusty-buff suffusion on tertials and secondaries.
Colours ofsoft parts. Bill: upper mandible dark brown, lower
pinkish-flesh with dark brown tip. Legs: pale brownish-grey.
Mouth: orange-red. Iris: yellowish-sepia. (The Handbook, ii, 44).
Measurements. Wing, dd' 90-101, Sj2