The NlP'htinP^ale {Lusdnia phUomela) 



By J. G. Wood 



Length: 5^ inches. 



Range: Southern Europe and southwestern Asia. 



Food: A valuable bird to the farmer, feeding largely upon insects, cater- 

 pillars, etc. 



Eggs : Four to five, small and of very thin shells. 



The nightingale is a small, reddish-brown, thrush-like bird of the Old 

 World, celebrated for the sweetness of its song. In England it is a modest, 

 shy bird, haunting rich woods and thickets. It lives chiefly on insects, especially 

 the larvae of ants. Like most insect-eating birds it is migrating, ranging from 

 northern Europe to northern Africa. It appears in England in April but does 

 not visit Wales, Ireland, or Scotland. The nest is large and built of grass and 

 leaves, preferably near running water. The eggs, four to five in number, are 

 olive green in color. The male is the singer, some poets to the contrary; while 

 the female is nesting, especially in the evening, he soars aloft pouring out a 

 rich burden of song, as if too happy to contain his secret. When the young 

 are hatched, he stops singing and busies himself hunting insects to fill open 

 mouths. The male is a favorite cage bird. The nightingale is celebrated in 

 literature. It is the Philomela of the poets. The name has been extended to 

 a number of somewhat similar birds, including the bulbul of the Orient and 

 one or more finches of our southern states. 



All attempts to introduce the far-famed nightingale into the United States 

 have failed. As a singer, he far surpasses the mocking bird and has been known 

 to sing more than one hundred days continuously. Its notes seem modulated 

 upon the rules of musical science. A study of this bird reminds one of the 

 story of Philomela whom the gods transformed into a nightingale and her sister, 

 Procne, into a swallow. 



Some Wonders of Bird Migration 



The biological survey has been collecting notes on bird migration for a 

 quarter of a century and has received migration notes from some 2,000 ob- 

 servers, from Panama to the Arctic circle, so that a mass of information con- 

 cerning the migratory habits of the various species of birds, the location of their 

 breeding grounds and winter homes, the routes followed in their migrations, the 

 times and speeds of migrations, and the relations of all these to the distribution 

 of food, climatic, meteorological and geographical conditions, etc., is available. 

 From the data at hand many interesting facts about bird migration have been 

 gleaned by the department of agriculture and published in a recent bulletin. 



There are some remarkable dififerences between the habits of various species 

 of birds. A few, notably the grouse, the quail, the cardinal and the Carolina 

 wren, are non-migratory while the arctic tern which nests in the frigid regions 



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