Reed warblers and allies | Acrocephalidae

Rietzangers | Carriceros

The bill is long, flat and broad at the base, the forehead runs level into it, and the legs are heavy with long toes: with these an upright stem is gripped and the bird climbs up and down with its feet clamped around two stems at once. The plumage is plain brown to olive, without markings that make the species easy to tell apart. The nest is a deep cylindrical basket woven around several stems; that depth keeps the eggs in place when the stems sway in the wind. The song is loud, grating and repetitive, with phrases repeated two or three times in a row, often at night as well. On one remote island in this region lives a species that does not migrate and keeps to low dry scrub rather than reeds, feeding mainly on moths; that island covers less than a square kilometre, and a second population has been established on a neighbouring island so that survival does not hang on the one place.