38 SPRING 



haustible vigour and zest. It recalls the guttural inconse- 

 quence of the whitethroat's strains by the highway, but is 

 far more powerful and sustained. Later in the year the 

 sedge-warbler imitates the songs and cries of many other 

 birds ; but on its first arrival it does not seem to be much of 

 a mocking-bird, unless indeed its own song may be partly 

 a rdsumi of notes caught in its winter home. Apparently it 

 has not the long memory of the starling, which will imitate 



in November the peewit's 

 spring cry, not heard since 

 May. From the time 

 when the sedge-warbler 

 comes to the watersides, 

 they lose their earlier 

 desolation, and spring 

 flows onward rapidly. 



Sedge-warblers do not 

 sing much after dusk in 

 the early part of the sea- 

 son ; the time when they 

 are so often mistaken for 

 nightingales is from mid- 

 May onwards to August, 

 during most of which period the nightingale does not sing. 

 Nightingales first arrive on the south-east coast about the 

 middle of April, and by the end of the third week the earlier 

 parties settle down in most of their haunts. Like other 

 migrants, they sing very little on arrival if the weather is cold 

 and windy ; but the first hot morning or soft night brings out 

 the music from the accustomed corner of the garden shrub- 

 bery, or copse or osier-bed. Nightingales are very constant 

 to the same haunt year after year, if they are not disturbed 

 and the undergrowth does not grow too rank and shady. 



NIGHTINGALE 



