SPRING 



garden rings the voice of the nightingale in his heyday. 

 Nightingales abound in these copses, and there are few 

 hours of day and night in May when they do not sing. They 

 delight in the chequered shade of the copsewood from about 

 its third to its sixth season ; then they nest on or close to the 

 ground among the flowers, and sing 

 on the tops of the saplings or on the 

 lower branches of the standard oaks. 



Nightingales' nests are almost in- 

 variably built of dry oak leaves pressed 

 together, and are rather scantily lined 

 with horse hairs and a few fibres of 

 root. Sometimes the mass of leaves 

 is as large as a blackbird's nest, but 

 usually about the size of a hedge- 

 sparrow's. When it is built on the 

 ground among the thick stems of blue- 

 bell and red robin and woodspurge and 

 stitchwort, it is often very closely con- 

 cealed ; it is easier to find when it is 

 raised a foot or eighteen inches above 

 the ground in a thick patch of brambles, 

 or sheltered in the midst of the green 

 shoots springing from an old bole. 

 When the birds are anxious for their 

 nest or young, they jerk nervously 

 from bough to bough uttering the low croak which they 

 retain after the end of the singing season, and also a low, 

 plaintive pipe. Sometimes the hen bird goes through the 

 palsied motions of ineffectual flight which have been taken 

 to be a deliberate attempt to draw off the intruder from the 

 nest or young ; but in the case of the smaller birds which 

 practise it, it appears to be chiefly involuntary. When the 



BLUEBELLS 



