40 



THE NIGHTINGALE. 



Daulias luscima (L.).* 



The first Nightingales appear to have arrived in the south- 

 east o£ England about the second and third weeks in April, 

 for from the 9th to the 17th of that month a few scattered 

 birds were observed in Essex, Kent, Sussex, Surre}', Berks, 

 Hants, Suffolk, and Cambridge. The only other records 

 during that time were of two birds in Monmouth on the 

 13th and of a single bird in Worcestor on the 17th, but 

 there is no evidence to show whether these arrived in the 

 west or straggled over from the east. 



There is not the slightest doubt that the bulk of the 

 Nightingales, which formed the breeding-stock of our south- 

 eastern counties, came into Hampshire in the early morning of 

 April the 18th as part of the vast wave of immigrants which 

 arrived on that day. The keeper of the St. Catherine's 

 lighthouse notes : — '' all the species (of small birds) were 

 simply uncountable, .... I never saw so many Nightin- 

 gales before, I could have caught fifty if required." 



The Hampshire inland records show a great increase during 

 the two following days, after which the majority of the birds 

 seem to have passed on in a north-easterly direction. Some 

 of them reached Wiltshire on the 19th, others appeared in 

 Surrey on the 21st, in Somerset on the 22nd, Berkshire on 

 the 24th, Cambridge on the 25th, and Essex, Suffolk, and 

 Norfolk on the 30th. 



The second immigration was noticed at the Hampshire 

 lights on April the 24th, but the numbers appear to have been 

 quite small and so passed unrecorded by our land-observers. 



A larger body seems to have arrived on the Sussex coast 



* [The Nightingale should be called Thilomela luschiia (L.) (c/. 

 Sclater, Bull. K 0. C. xvi. no. cxx. pp. 39-41, 1905).— Ed.] 



