80 Nightingales in Song-time 



sky. There is no complete silence in the bird world 

 at evening before the nightingale begins ; for it is 

 as great a mistake to think that the nightingale is 

 the only night singer as that it never sings by day. 

 Where the open skyline runs dark against the after- 

 glow, the peewits are wakefully calling. They, too, 

 have a fever by night in the blood. A song-thrush 

 sings till the first planets are deeply burning ; and 

 a song-thrush singing at evening has constantly 

 been mistaken for a nightingale. The reel of the 

 grasshopper warbler comes from the long grass in the 

 meadows, the babble of the sedge-warbler from the 

 river a little beyond, and the churr of the night-jar 

 from the trees on the common or in the copse. The 

 cuckoo calls afar ; a brown owl hoots, or a white 

 one screeches ; partridges creak among the green 

 young corn. Then, from the far copse beyond the 

 cornfield, six hundred yards away, comes that 

 vehement pulsing upon the ear that can be caused 

 only by the nightingale. Its music enlarges as we 

 near it ; but before every note is heard, another 

 nightingale is answering from the hedge that bounds 

 the field, and another from the osier-bed in the 

 level meadows by the stream. Half an hour later 

 there will be seven or eight vying with one another 

 in the square mile or so of country which the station- 

 ary listener can command, and their voices ring on 

 till long past midnight in the soft spring air. 



The nightingale is a common bird of summer in 

 moist and leafy places through a wide region of 

 southern and south-eastern England. Unlike most 

 other summer birds of passage, which land at various 



