84 Nightingales in Song-time 



darkest variety of robin's egg, though the indications 

 of relationship are not so strong as in the nest and 

 the young. 



The birth of the young nightingales brings the 

 end of the old bird's song, except for a few rare and 

 casual notes. The cocks are regularly employed 

 henceforward in helping to feed the four or five 

 naked nestlings, lifting on wavering necks their 

 gaping mouths and blind, goggle eyes in the direc- 

 tion of any stir that they take for their parents' 

 coming. In contrast with the supreme music 

 which the cock poured forth before the hatching 

 of the eggs, his utterance is now almost the slightest 

 and harshest among all the bird-voices of the grove. 

 Even in his time of song he would sometimes utter 

 a low, dull croak to express uneasiness or resent- 

 ment at an intruder. This frog-like cry, alternated 

 with a short, piping note, which is almost equally 

 inarticulate, is anxiously repeated by both birds 

 when they consider that the young are threatened, 

 either in the nest or after they have left it. By the 

 time that June is a fortnight old, this dumb undoing 

 has fallen upon all the nightingales, except for a rare 

 straggler or two still occupied with a second nest 

 after his first was destroyed, who utters a few half- 

 hearted snatches among the silence of his rivals of 

 May. The whitening of the first elder-flower fore- 

 closes the music of the year ; and the last of the 

 blackcaps and thrushes sing thinly in an emptier 

 ether up to the falling of full silence in July. 



