242 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



shivering on the stone step beneath the window. I 

 picked it up and held it to the air in my open hand ; 

 but in two or three seconds it was dead. 



*' I lost my wife shortly afterwards. That was five 

 years ago, and from that time we have had no nightin- 

 gale here." 



It was not strange that the tragedy of the little bird 

 had made a very deep impression on him ; that the 

 death of his wife coming shortly afterwards had actually 

 caused him to think there was something out of the 

 natural in it. But I could not say that I was of his 

 opinion, though I could believe that the acute distress 

 she had suffered at witnessing such a thing, and possibly 

 the effect of thinking too much about it, had aggra- 

 vated her malady and perhaps even hastened her end. 



For the rest, the accident to the nightingale, which 

 deprived the rectory and the village of its singer, is not 

 an uncommon one among birds ; our windows as well 

 as our overhead wires are a danger to them. I have 

 seen a small bird on a good many occasions dash itself 

 against a window-pane ; and, in one instance, at a 

 country house in Ireland, the bird, a chiffchaff, came 

 violently against my bedroom window twice when I 

 stood in the room watching it. The attraction was a 

 fly crawling up the pane inside. But this explanation 

 does not fit the case of the nightingale with other 

 cases I have observed ; he is not like the warblers and 

 the pied wagtail (a frequent striker against window- 

 glass) a pursuer of flies. No doubt birds are some- 

 times dazzled and confused, or hypnotised by the 



