230 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



I know that in a few weeks' time he will be back at 

 the same spot; in this case we do not say "barring 

 accidents"; they are not impossible, but are too rare 

 to be taken into consideration. Yet it is a strange 

 thing! He ceased singing about June 20, nearly 

 nine months ago; he vanished about the end of 

 September; yet we may confidently look and listen 

 for him in about six weeks from to-day! When he 

 left us, so far as we know, he travelled, by day or 

 night, but in any case unseen by even the sharpest 

 human eyes, south to the Channel and France; then 

 on through the whole length of that dangerous 

 country where men are killers and eaters of little 

 birds; then across Spain to another sea; then across 

 Algeria and Tripoli to the Sahara and Egypt, and, 

 whether by the Nile or along the shores of the Red 

 Sea, on to more southern countries still. He travels 

 his four thousand miles or more, not by a direct 

 route, but now west and now south, with many 

 changes of direction until he finds his winter home. 

 We cannot say just where our bird is; for it is prob- 

 able that in that distant region where his six months' 

 absence is spent the area occupied by the nightingales 

 of British race may be larger than this island. The 

 nightingale that was singing in this thicket eleven 

 months ago may now be in Abyssinia, or in British 

 East Africa, or in the Congo State. 



And even now at that distance from his true home 

 — this very clump where the sap is beginning to move 

 in the grey naked oaks and brambles and thorns — 

 something stirs in him too: not memory nor passion 



