312 BIRD WATCHING 



croak, as I have called it, of the nightingale, it would 

 be difficult to imagine the high, clear notes of the 

 thrush having been developed, whilst it would account 

 for the low key in which its own are generally pitched. 

 What I mean is — for I am not versed in musical 

 terminology — that, in the nightingale's song, there are 

 not those high, clear, ringing notes which we hear in 

 that of the thrush, blackcap, skylark, and many other 

 birds, just as in these we may listen in vain for those 

 richer and more liquid tones which charm us so in 

 the nightingale. Beautiful as these tones are, they 

 do not, any more than those of other birds, include 

 every excellence, and that particular one which they 

 lack, being common to so many of our songsters, has 

 come to be something which one loves and listens 

 for, whenever bird sings upon bough. Partly because 

 of this, perhaps, and partly because of the very pre- 

 eminence of the nightingale as a singer, I have some- 

 times missed these franker, woodland-wilder strains 

 whilst listening to its song, in a way in which I have 

 never missed its own more dulcet notes from the 

 song of lark or thrush. To say that Pindar is not 

 also Sappho is no blame to Pindar, but the short 

 continuance and frequent pauses in the song of the 

 nightingale is, I think, a real fault, and from the 

 blame of it this prima donna frequently escapes, 

 when other sweet, but not so all-belauded, singers 

 are taken thereupon to task. The poor blackbird, 

 for instance, whose ditty is most " lovely-sweet," has 

 been rated in these terms ; yet, as a rule, in my 

 experience, it sings continuously, for a longer time 

 than does the nightingale, whose sometimes almost 

 constant cessations, just when one's whole soul cries 



