Nightingales in Song-time 83 



the thicket, or searching for food along the grassy 

 edge of some woodland ride, many of its movements 

 and gestures are seen to be closely similar to those 

 with which the robin has made us familiar. The 

 close kinship between the two birds is shown still 

 more strongly by a comparison of their nests, eggs, 

 and young. The young birds in their first plumage 

 have in both cases that livery of tawny brown, 

 spotted with dull ochre, which is common to many 

 other species in the same group, and is held to 

 represent the plumage of the common ancestor of 

 the tribe before the differentiation of the present 

 kinds. The nest of both birds is a very loose 

 structure, chiefly of dry leaves packed together, but 

 provided with a neat and comfortable central 

 hollow, which is lined, as a rule, with horsehair. 

 As the robin's nest is almost invariably fitted closely 

 into a hole on all sides but one, the modification of 

 shape thus caused tends to conceal its likeness to 

 that of the nightingale, which has a more open 

 situation, and is not built, therefore, in the same 

 lopsided manner. But when attention is directed 

 to the comparison, the similarity in the choice and 

 arrangement of the materials becomes obvious. At 

 first sight, again, the nightingale's egg, with its 

 uniform tint of olive, seems quite unlike the tawny- 

 spotted robin's egg, and every other British bird's 

 egg as well. Yet there is a fairly common variety 

 of nightingale's egg in which the usual uniform 

 colouring breaks up into deep tawny mottlings on 

 a slightly paler ground of the same tawny hue. 

 This variety has a distinct resemblance to the 



