90 CLARKE AND NELSON : THE BIRDS OE YORKSHIRE. 



speedily to tame or make wild birds sing than to give them a 

 pleasing insect or two daily ; neither this nor thick-billed birds 

 but will gladly eat spiders as I have experienced in some kinds.' 

 Local names — Robin; Robin redbreast (general); and 

 Ploughman's Bird (Lofthouse, near Wakefield) are the only 

 ones known to the writer. 



DAULIAS LUSCINIA (Z.). 

 Nightingale. 



A local summer visitant to the south-eastern portion of the county. 



' Philomela luscinia — Nightingale — was heard in the immediate suburbs 

 of York last spring; has been met with at Skelton about five miles north of 

 the city some years ago; it breeds every year in the wood at Caywood, near 

 York ; near Huddersfield ; at Cinderfield Dyke Wood in Bradley ; a few 

 pairs are met with near Barnsley every year where, as in some other places, 

 they soon fall a prey to the bird-catchers ; it is occasionally heard near 

 Sheffield ; it occurs at Walton Hall and Bramham Park ; and near Doncaster 

 is common in Edlington and other Woods.' — Thomas AlHs, 1844. 



The Nightingale as a Yorkshire bird has peculiar attractions. 

 To the ornithologist it possesses special intere.st, since it attains 

 in this county the northernmost limit of its British range ; while 

 to the public generally quite a halo of romance surrounds the 

 bird, probably because to many localities its visits are like those 

 of the proverbial angels, few and far between. 



In the closing years of the eighteenth century, and in the 

 earlier decades of the one just passed away (the nineteenth), 

 Doncaster — where Pennant in 1766 tells us they were met with 

 in great plenty — was regarded by the recognised writers on 

 British Ornithology as the most northern locality visited in 

 England. In 1844 Mr. Thomas Allis, in his oft alluded to report, 

 stated that it occurred with some regularity much further north, 

 and informed the naturalists of his day that it had been heard 

 in the suburbs of York in the spring of that year, and that it 

 had been met with at Skelton about five miles north of that city 



■riMus. Y.N.a., 189,S(pub. 19JI). Series B 



