Nightingales in Song-time 79 



in a garden, it will be noticed how each of them 

 keeps strictly within certain boundaries. By night, 

 when the passion expressed in song is greatest, they 

 often take up a post for singing some distance in 

 advance of their usual haunts by day, travelling 

 down the hedge that leads from the distant wood, 

 or crossing from the garden lawn in the dusk to ring 

 challenge from the nearer thickets. Absorbed in 

 utterance, they can be cautiously approached at 

 such times to within three or four yards' distance ; 

 and even after they have taken the alarm and flown 

 into deeper cover, if the intruder withdraws they 

 will sometimes return to their posts in less than a 

 minute, and resume the full tide of song. 



Nightingales sing almost as eagerly at midday 

 as midnight, and there are few hours in the day or 

 night when their voices are not sometimes to be 

 heard. But there is a general abatement of their 

 song a little before the dawn; the passion of the 

 earlier night is stilled, and the light is heralded by 

 the clearer notes of the thrush. After the amazing 

 burst of song with which the break of day is wel- 

 comed by every bird, there is comparative silence 

 in the early morning hours. Birds are busy in 

 feeding, and it is then, besides, that nests are chiefly 

 built. From nine or ten in the morning to about 

 five in the afternoon the nightingale's song is once 

 more loud in the land. It may be heard from time 

 to time in the earlier evening ; but most of the birds 

 seem content to be silent until a little while after 

 sunset, or even until the inverted Plough swings 

 luminously, if the night be clear, in the high May 



