SUMMER VISITORS TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 11 



struck by the number of nests that are destroyed. The 

 birds learn, at any rate, to be skilful in hiding their nests, 

 and bold in sitting quiet on them. Last summer I much 

 admired a blackcap who sat steadily on the nest in a small 

 bramble bush only a short distance above the ground, while 

 several small boys were picking flowers all round, making 

 their usual noise, and even kicking against the bush. The 

 cock blackcap often takes his turn on the nest, but always 

 seems more ready to leave it than the hen. Once last 

 summer when I put the cock off the nest he broke out into 

 loud song — perhaps in anger, or perhaps in pleasure at being 

 relieved from an unpleasant duty, for he did not go back, 

 and I saw the hen take his place. That birds do sing from 

 anger is, I feel sure, the case at times. Sedge warblers will 

 often be roused to song if a stone be thrown into the bush 

 where they are, and I have heard a nightingale sing more 

 vehemently than before while I was looking at his nest 

 from which I had just flushed his wife. 



There are nightingales on the Downs, and more of them 

 than you would think, for they seem rather more silent than 

 they are in other places, and it is difficult to find them in 

 good song. But they nest on the Downs, and their nests are 

 wonderfully concealed and often exceedingly difficult to find 

 — generally among a thick jungle of bushes, and so deep in 

 the ground ivy that you cannot see them till your eyes are 

 just over them. I saw two nests last summer on the Downs 

 quite close to a road, in both of which the young were success- 

 fully reared. One day I crawled up to one until my head 

 was almost touching the hen as she sat on the nest. At last 

 she fluttered away along the ground, leaving her young just 

 hatched ; she did not go far, but waited till I had retired, 

 and then returned again ; and presently I heard a loud churr, 

 and saw the cock come and perch on a branch above the 



