THE NIGHTINGALE AND ITS HAUNTS 65 



nights and days of spring, when the Though the nightingale is as regular 

 nightingale will forget its broken and a singer of the middle part of the day, 

 halting catches, and pour forth an when the sun is highest in heaven, 

 almost unbroken tide of deep and pas- as any blackbird or chaffinch or yel- 

 sionate music. It is an experience never lowhammer, its song is never more 

 to be forgotten to hear two nightin- impressive than when it breaks for 

 gales thus challenging one another the first time upon the long expectant 

 across a still and darkened valley, one ear out of the silence of the April 

 near and one far away, singing with night. Like all the birds of summer 

 all the power and sweetness that is in which are less known by sight than 

 them till the distant miles of country by their song, in cold, ungenial 

 seem filled with their voices alone, weather it may often be present for 

 There is one run of the same deep, days in the copses and broken fringes 

 liquid note, repeated a dozen times of the woods before it reveals itself by 

 or more in succession, which comes its first pulsing strain. At such times 

 so suddenly, and is so different from only a watchful and persistent eye 

 what has gone before, that an inex- will catch a glimpse of the alert, grey, 

 perienced ear generally takes it shapely figure uneasily shifting in the 

 for the song of some different bird underwood, or alighting for a moment 

 in the heart of the same thicket, in quest of food on the grassy margin 

 And rarer than this, so rare, indeed, of a woodland lane, while the wind 

 that unless one is regularly estab- clings to the east in a grey, forbidding 

 lished in the midst of a nightingale sky, and all the spring stands still 

 country at song-time one may never in the hedgerows. After a week or 

 hear it for years together, is another more of such a lingering " blackthorn 

 and deeper note, kept up perfectly winter " all may be changed in an 

 sweet and true to an almost incredible hour by a turn of the wind at sun- 

 length, as long as any man could down into the south or west ; and then, 

 whistle on a single breath. No other though other birds are stilled by 

 English bird produces anything at all darkness, and not even the restless 

 like it ; and the effect of this deep, sedge-warbler has yet taken up his 

 wonderful call in the midst of a ve- nocturnal song of later summer, the 

 hement cataract of notes far up the heart of the nightingale is responsive 

 scale above it is simply indescribable, to the unsealing breath of spring. 



