BLACKCAP 57 



specimen is in the Dover Museum, procured by Mr. 

 C. Gordon." 



BLACKCAP. 



Sylvia atricapilla (Linnaeus). S.N., i., p. 332 (1766). 



After the Nightingale, there is no doubt that the Black- 

 cap calls forth much pleasurable attention from his 

 charming song. As soon as he has taken up a position, 

 after his arrival, there you may find him sitting in a tree, 

 singing his best, filling the woods with joyful music, and 

 there he remains until his "ladye love" makes her 

 appearance. The Blackcap appears to hold his own, at 

 present, throughout the beautiful woodlands of Kent, 

 and the numbers do not visibly diminish, in fact, they 

 apparently increase, or one pays more attention to their 

 song than before. 



The habits of this bird resemble somewhat those of 

 the Nightingale ; it prefers the outskirts of low woods 

 and thickets, with a few trees mingled with it, as a kind 

 of watch tower, from which it is to be seen continually 

 darting up and down during the breeding season. 



Boys adds the Blackcap to his Birds of Sand- 

 wich, 1792. The Kev. J. Pemberton Bartlett in 1844, 

 in his Ornithology of Kent, says the " Blackcaps arrive 

 here about the middle of April, and are rarely to be seen 

 after September, although an instance is recorded of 

 a Blackcap being shot in Kent as late as January. It 

 is frequently called the ' Kentish Nightingale,' which 

 epithet it deserves, for its notes are wildly melodious." 



Among the arrivals of summer birds at Shooter's Hill, 

 in Kent, in 1844, Mr. M. Hutchinson gives the following 

 notes of this bird : "On the morning of April 9, 1844, 



