72 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



of April, he will be as certain of hearing a nightingale 

 singing as of finding bushes ; and in every one of 

 those circles there will be a nightingale's nest in May, 

 though half a dozen such circles might be clustered 

 together in one spot, and you might have to go for 

 miles, through apparently suitable country, before 

 you came to another. 



CONSERVATIVE BIRDS. 



This conservatism is not peculiar, however, to the 

 nightingale. It is rather the rule among migrants, 

 and you may almost count with certainty upon hear- 

 ing the jangling song of the first sedge-warbler in 

 exactly the same bush where you first heard it in the 

 previous year. It is always a solitary sedge-warbler, 

 too, who seems to be singing almost incessantly in 

 the hope that his tardy mate will hear and join him. 

 Although it is very rarely that such an established 

 station is deserted, so long as it remains suitable, new 

 birds frequently appear in new places, and it depends 

 upon their success in finding mates and rearing 

 families whether these become established stations 

 too. Very often they fail, however, and last year 

 both a green woodpecker and a pied flycatcher tried 

 to establish themselves in a field where neither of 

 their kinds had been known to breed before; but 

 after singing and calling for a day or two, one in a 

 very loud and the other in a very weak voice, both 

 gave up the attempt to find a mate, and drifted away. 



