40 WILD BIRDS 



I had never heard of. A friend told me, however, 

 that the blackcaps had reached Sicily from Africa, 

 but were not yet at their best in song. He could 

 tell me nothing of the thrushlike phrase, and, though 

 I heard the same phrase a little later in Naples 

 where blackcaps were common it was absent from 

 the songs of the bird further north, about Rome, 

 and under the Apennines north of Spezzia. The 

 more northern blackcaps sang the same song as our 

 English blackcaps, whilst the only garden warbler 

 I heard in the South also gave the song we have 

 from garden warblers at home. 



Next, the nightingales : I cannot say I noticed 

 any difference between the nightingale's song 

 in Sicily and the nightingale's song as I hear it in 

 England, but it is another thing with some of the 

 nightingales I heard sing in the North of Italy in 

 a garden under the Apennines. Those nightingales 

 were extraordinary. They not only kept it up the 

 whole day, and during the hottest part of the day, 

 but they sang with a " full-throated ease " which I 

 believe I have never heard from the bird before. 

 In this garden which was all as beautiful as the 

 Sicilian gardens, if it had not quite their wondrous 

 setting the nightingales were very bold and tame. 

 They sang in full view among the oleander and 

 eucalyptus. 



The Italian garden is the home of a warbler utterly 

 unknown to England the Sardinian. One sees 

 and hears it everywhere in Sicily, and I found it 

 common on the mainland. It lives in Sicily through- 



