268 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



its singing on the wing, as it does with us during 

 summer. M. Sonnini indeed says that nightingales, 

 which " live during the winter in the verdant and 

 smiling plains of Lower Egypt, and perhaps also 

 on the coasts of Syria and Barbary, during their 

 passage and their stay on these foreign shores, do 

 not warble those melodious songs, those varied and 

 brilliant modulations, with which they night and day 

 make our woods resound, inasmuch as they do not 

 busy themselves with pairing and breeding: they are 

 silent, because they require not to sing of love*/' 

 Yet we cannot help thinking that his observations 

 were partly biassed by the theory with which he 

 follows them up, more particularly as we have the 

 testimony of M. Le Marie to the fact of the nightin- 

 gale singing in Africa f. 



When these birds, again, are kept in cages or avia- 

 ries in Europe during the winter, they sing as well as 

 the red-breasts and the wrens out of doors; another 

 strong proof of the incorrectness of M. Sonnini' s 

 remark. We have for two winters possessed a male 

 black-cap (Sylvia atricapilla) , which begins to war- 

 ble in autumn about the time the red-breasts come 

 into our gardens, and perch upon houses to sing. 

 Towards Christmas it comes into fujl song, piping 

 so shrilly at times as to be rather too much for our 

 ears to bear with pleasure. This, however, is at 

 least three or four months before the usual time of 

 pairing, and hence it is fair to conclude, that the 

 pairing is not the cause of its singing, no more than 

 the same circumstance will account for the winter 

 songs of the red-breast and other soft-billed birds, 

 which are continued in the fields as well as by those 

 which are tamed J. 



Mr. Sweet, who has successfully kept most of our 



* Voyages, ii. 401. 

 f Quoted by Montbeillard, Ois. art. Rosignol. J J, R. 



