on the Nesting of the Sprosser.



323



dividual songster has his own particular style and, vvhat is more,

each individual has as many songs as he has moods. Last May I

had the privilege of hearing the love-song of this species; it was

so completely different from the ordinary song, so low and sweet

and varied, that I should never have guessed it proceeded from a

Sprosser if I had not seen the bird singing. Alas, it only lasted

for the three days during which pairing was taking place.


I have not heard the song of the Eastern Nightingale and

therefore am not able to compare it, but I am told by one who

has heard it sing in captivity in India that its song is more

powerful than, but not so varied or melodious as, that of the

Western Nightingale ; it is, however, a very free singer and will

even deliver its song when being carried about in a cage by hand.

To sum the matter up in a few words, the further east we go the

more freely will Nightingales sing in captivity and the less

melodious will their song be.


Nesting.


It was on the nth of May that I received the lieu Sprosser ;

it had not been “ meated off” and had evidently only been a few

days in captivity. It is rarely that I have the luck to secure a

“softbill” in so satisfactory a condition, unless I do my own

trapping. As a rule they reach me with digestions ruined by

some horrible “mixture” and are quite worthless for breeding

purposes. All that I knew about the nesting habits of this

species at that time was that, according to Bree, it preferred the

“ neighbourhood of water and marshes.” It so happened that I

had a shallow tank in the larger aviary which was not in use,

so I soon fitted up a corner for them by planting part of it with

bamboos and reeds. This sounds delightfully simple but I feel

damp even now when I recollect how we brought those bamboos

ten miles, and the clumps of reeds six miles by boat, filled the

tank with earth and planted the clumps which varied in weight

from half a hundredweight to a hundredweight each. I also

constructed a mound of earth and planted it with a kind of fine

grass which grows on the cliffs because our Nightingale likes to

nest on a bank and, if D. luscinia, why not D. philoinela ?


By the 19th, everything was ship-shape, and on that day I

turned out the newly-arrived female with a male which had been



