At Home with Wild Nature 



never made any measurements, my own experience does 

 not incline me to contradict even this apparently 

 extravagant estimate. 



The auricular organs of nearly all wild creatures are 

 highly developed. Whilst waiting in the open for an 

 expected Zeppelin raid one night in Thanet I was 

 struck by the fact that farmyard roosters, pheasants, 

 partridges, peewits, $n.d: pi&eii birds began to give 

 tongue long b6fb*fe the* ofriiriou's whir of the invaders' 

 propellers tyecaipe : >oftl>ble: to* tinniest sensitive human 

 ears. 



The nightingale is a superb feathered vocalist, enjoy- 

 ing, however, the inestimable advantage of performing 

 during the hours of darkness when most of his competi- 

 tors are silent and the peace of night has settled upon 

 the land. Many people think that Philomel as the old 

 English poets were fond of calling the bird only utters 

 his ravishingly sweet notes after all the other feathered 

 woodlanders have gone to rest, and that he is the only 

 nocturnal songster. Both impressions are, of course, 

 wrong. The bird sings as blithely by day as by night, 

 but his notes are, in the ears of the inexperienced, mixed 

 up and obscured by those of such accomplished per- 

 formers as the blackcap warbler, the garden warbler and 

 song thrush, and the flute-like utterances of the black- 

 bird. 



I never had an opportunity of listening to this prince 

 of woodland musicians until I was over twenty years 

 of age, and was so delighted with the bird's wonderful 

 notes that I stayed up all night on a Surrey common 



