IX Nightingales in Song-time 



MAY is the only month which is completely included 

 in the period of the nightingale's music. In a 

 normal season, its voice is first heard about the end 

 of the third week in April, when the primroses are 

 at the height of their blossoming, and before the haze 

 of green about the elm-boles has thickened into 

 opening leaf. By the time that the hawthorn 

 blossom is at its height, the nightingales are beginning 

 to be missed in the chorus of the whitened brakes ; 

 and before the first wild roses open, little is heard of 

 their music but an occasional and broken strain. By 

 Midsummer Day their voices seem already to have 

 been forgotten in the dense-leaved woods. The 

 herbage is rank and dark above their nesting-place ; 

 the abandoned nest is flattened by night-roaming 

 fieldmice, or racked asunder by the growth of its 

 sustaining briars. Once June comes in, amid the 

 swiftness of summer's changes, there is a sense that 

 every time the strong note pulses from the thicket 

 it may be the last to be heard in the year's brief 

 term of song. But up to the end of May there is 

 no night, and no day, when the voice of the nightin- 

 gales cannot be heard in the southern copses ; 

 and their unequalled music seems to mark the ful- 

 filment of spring more thoroughly than even the 

 complete unfolding of the leaf, or the blaze of 



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