The Nightingale. 59 



on a branch of another tree some fifty feet away, and then the concert re- 

 commenced : never before or since have I heard any of these three species 

 sing so superbly. 



The nest of the Nightingale is usually placed in a hole in the ground, less 

 frequently in the forking base of a pollard partly overhung by rank grass 

 and fern-fronds, rarely in bramble or hawthorn, a foot or more above the 

 earth, but in such unusual positions I have only twice found it, its usual 

 site is in a depression at the foot of a tree, pollard, or bramble-bush well 

 concealed by ferns, grasses or other short undergrowth. On several occasions, 

 however, I have found it fully exposed to the sky, among the drifted oak- 

 leaves in a small clearing close to some blind keeper's path : when thus 

 situated, it appears to the casual pedestrian to be merely a round hole among 

 the dead leaves ; but, to the experienced birds'-nester, it is fully revealed at 

 a glance. Curiousl}^ enough the rustics who, in a desultory fashion, have 

 plundered and destroyed nests from their babyhood upwards, invariably over- 

 look all nests which are uierely protected by their environment in this fashion, 

 and express the greatest wonder that a townsman should instantly recognize 

 as a nest that which they would have passed as a hole in the ground, or a 

 bunch of leaves. 



The structure itself is loosel}^ put together, the cup very deep ; the outer 

 walls composed of coarse dry flattened bents, rushes, or even fine flags, lined with 

 finer bents, root-fibre, and sometimes a little horsehair ; the whole of the outer 

 wall is covered and concealed by dead oak-leaves. The eggs, which number from 

 four to six, are brownish olive ; rarel}^ with a red-brown zone round the broader 

 extremity. Still more rarely, they are bluish green, mottled with reddish brown, 

 and somewhat resemble eggs of the Bluethroat : but eggs of this type I have 

 never found, and those with the red-brown zone only twice ; the colouring is 

 doubtless protective, for the typical eggs look at first glance much like oval 

 pebbles at the bottom of a small hole in the earth. 



The call-note is said to be ivate, wate, cur-cur; but this always appeared to 

 me to be a note of caution or anger ; the call to the female is either a piercing 

 thin key-whistle like that of the Blackbird and Robin, to which she replies in 

 the same manner, or a soothing tooey to which she does not reply, at least I 

 never heard her ; but perhaps the fact that a human being was in dangerous 

 proximity to her nest, may have made her cautious : the alarm note is a low 

 guttural sort of croak. The hatching of a brood is signalized by a different note 

 which has been rendered clmrr, cliurr. The song of the Nightingale commences 

 soon after his arrival on our coasts and continues until the young are hatched, 



P 



