Nightingales in Song-time 75 



innumerable dandelions and buttercups in the sun- 

 lit meadows. 



The spots which the nightingale haunts are those 

 in which the successive features of unfolding spring 

 reveal themselves with the greatest attraction, and 

 it is this which helps to associate its song with some 

 of the most beautiful phases of the year. Even 

 more than most small birds, the nightingale avoids 

 the dark interior of the woodlands. It clings to 

 the fringe of the larger plantations, or the broken 

 thickets and deep hedgerows, where the sunlight 

 plays with the chequered shadows, and flower and 

 verdure are nursed into early brightness. At the 

 same time, it is a shy bird and a lover of sheltering 

 cover ; so that it is commonly found, not among 

 the isolated bushes or low beds of thorn and herbage 

 which suit the taste of many other nesting birds, 

 but where denser harbourage is furnished by an 

 even hazel-copse, or tangle of hawthorn and dog- 

 rose, or some shadowed thicket where the lowest 

 elm-boughs brush the spiny blackthorns. These 

 favourite haunts of the nightingale are full of the 

 richest flowers and verdure of spring. Where trees 

 and lower bushes mingle at the edge of the wood, 

 at the time of the nightingales' coming the black- 

 thorn blossom stars its leafless boughs, the wild 

 cherry unfolds its still purer whiteness, and prim- 

 roses and anemones cover the ground beneath. As 

 May deepens, the flowers grow taller ; soon the 

 anemone withers, and the primroses grow pale and 

 lank, as the stronger sunlight fills the shadier places 

 a little within the wood with the deep and liquid 



