THE CEYLON GREAT REED-WARBLER

                                            (Acrocephalus stentoreus meridionalis)

 

        Sinhalese: HAMBU-KURULLA                                           Tamil: TINU-KURUVI

 RECOGNITION-Length about 7.5 inches; sexes alike ; distinguishable by its olive-brown upper plumage, off-white lower plumage, pale eye-streak and loud,noisy,chattering voice.

 

On approaching a dense bed of tall bulrushes in any large tank or swamp, one’s attention is arrested by the volume of loud, harsh, chattering song issuing therefrom .Then in the reed-tops, one sees a rather slim. Brownish bird, singing lustily against its neighbor, a loud, harsh, rather grating, oft-repeated song-this is the reed-beds and surrounding vegetation and nest there in.When it is not singing, it hops about furtively, skulking amongst the reed or rushes, seeking the small flies, larvae and grasshoppers on which it lives.

 

DISTRIBUTION- This large Warbler is almost entirely confined to beds of tall rushes or reeds growing in

the shallows of sheets of fresh or slightly brackish water throughout the low-country

 The sub-species is peculiar to Ceylon,but closely allied races to Europe and Asia. 

NESTING-During April, May and June, the nest may be met with in the same dense reed-beds in which the Warblers live; it is a thick-walled, deep cup, generally well concealed some two to three feet above the water. Supported by the five or six rush-stems to which it is laced. The cup built entirely of strips of dead rush and lined with fine strips of similar material and rush-flowers.

The nest measures about 4 inches in height by 3.2 inches in diameter, the inside cup being about 1.2

 inches in depth and 2 inches in diameter. The three eggs are grayish-white to greenish-white,

 marked with irregular blotches and spots of deep, blackish brown and underlying marking of

lavender  or neutral tint; they are glossless, and measure about 22.7 mm x 15.9 mm.

 

 

source by: Bird of Ceylon (Book)