186



Mr. W. F. Teschemakek,



most surely doomed should they find Central Europe frost-bound or

swept by blizzards, as has been the case in this memorable and

untoward spring.


Nothing perhaps is more saddening for a bird-lover than to

revisit the well-known haunt of some particular species season after

season and to listen in vain for a voice that is still, This has been

the writer’s lot for some seasons past in the case of the Nightingale.

Only a few years since I described in a contemporary a flourishing

colony of our renowned minstrel in East Devon but, if I revisit the

spot now, it is but to find the “ barren choirs where late the sweet

bird sang.”


This once favoured spot is close to Chudleigh Knighton—a

little village lying between Chudleigh and Newton Abbot. There

was once a great lake here, the ancient bottom of which is now

known as Bovey Heath, and consists for the most part of a deposit

of “ china clay,” washed down from the surrounding hills by the

moorland streams. Men, whose names have long since been forgotten,

dug out the clay, forming large pits, and these in course of time were

filled up with water and became covered with trees and dense

undergrowth, forming a secluded and almost impenetrable retreat,

which the nightingale colony, above referred to, regarded as their

very ow r n. They had divided up their kingdom into five sections,

using the ancient paths as boundaries, and each section was occupied

by a pair.


But, both for birds and men, life is sure to be full of trouble.

One spring the Nightingales returned to find that a quantity of the

undergrowth had been cut down for firewood. There was consterna¬

tion among the colonists and much fighting and a re-division of the

land. The next spring witnessed the final disruption of the colony

and the abandonment of the site. Only two or three pairs returned,

and they found that their enemies, the human race, with the latter’s

customary greed of gain and complete disregard of the feelings and

vested interests of birds, had opened a new clay-pit and erected a

hideous and noisy pump in nightingale-pond. This was the unkindest

act of all and so outraged the feelings of the Nightingales that they

abandoned the locality and have not been seen in the neighbourhood

from that day.



