OF SELBORNE. 201 



It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the 

 night ; perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a 



ginning of April ; in Somersetshire it seldom arrives till the middle or 

 latter end of that month, and sometimes not till the beginning of May : 

 Devonshire, and Cornwall, and some other counties, it does not visit at 

 all : it generally leaves us again the beginning of September. Its song, 

 when wild, is very fine, but lasts but a few weeks : to have it in the 

 greatest perfection is, to have a good bird in a cage, where, if it be a very 

 kindly one, it will begin singing the beginning of December, and continue 

 till June. I had a very fine one that only left off singing the latter end 

 of June last ; it began again a little in September, and on" the 1st of De- 

 cember it was in full song, and continued to sing through the whole of 

 the month, and nearly all day long, as fine as if at Midsummer, and would 

 have continued on had not the frost set in so severe : when singing in a 

 cage none of the soft notes are lost ; they are all heard quite clear, which 

 is not the case when heard in the woods or hedges. 



The best way to be certain of a good nightingale is to get one that is 

 just caught in spring; for there is no dependance on a young one bred 

 up from the nest, or a young brancher, except it be kept with a good old 

 bird, to learn its proper notes from ; a young one being apt to catch all it 

 hears, good or bad, and to be deficient of many of its natural ones. I 

 had one three years, and it never sang worth any thing : the year before 

 last I turned it out, and it continued in the gardens round the house 

 until it left the country in autumn ; it returned back to the same place 

 last spring, where I recognised it by its bad song, and it continued about 

 the same place all the summer, and bred up a nest of young ones. A 

 female that I had also been keeping for six years, to see if she would 

 breed, I also turned out with him, but whether she came back and was 

 partner in the nest, I cannot say, as I had no mark to know her by: this 

 female I kept four years, and it never attempted to sing; the fifth year it 

 sang frequently, a pretty soft nightingale's note. I have found that the 

 case with several female birds, they do not sing till they become aged ; 

 but it is not a rule universally applicable, as I have had a female willow 

 wren that sang when quite young. 



I treat my nightingales in exactly the same manner as is before 

 mentioned, which is at variance with the bird-fanciers' method, who 

 feed them on grated beef and egg, and German paste ; but I have never 

 heard of any being kept many years on that food : the German paste I do 

 not approve at all, as the maw-seeds, honey, sugar, and such out of the 

 way ingredients, I am convinced must be very injurious to their health. 

 The best thing to keep them in good health and spirits is, to give them as 

 much insect food as possible, and there are scarcely any insects they will 

 refuse except hairy caterpillars : they are particularly fond of ants and 

 their eggs, for which they will leave any other food ; they are also very 

 partial to all sorts of smooth caterpillars, earwigs, crickets, grasshoppers, 

 cockroaches, common maggots, and meal-worms : but there is nothing that 

 all the birds of this tribe are so fond of, as the young larvae in the combs 

 of wasps and hornets ; they will even eat them after they become winged. 

 I have, when a boy, kept nightingales, blackcaps, the greater pettychaps, 

 and whitethroats, for two months at a time on nothing else. 



