58 Mr. A. L. Butler,


NOTES ON THE MIGRATION OF

THE SPROSSER AND COMMON NIGHTINGALES.

By A. L. Butler, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.


In his excellent paper on the Sprosser (Daulias philomela)

in the Aviculiural Magazine for September, Mr. Tescheniaker

gives some very interesting notes on the recorded migrations of

this bird and the Common Nightingale (Daulias luscinia).


I have collected and observed birds in the Sudan for eleven

years (1901 —1911), and my experience of these two species has

been as follows.


Sprossers annually arrive in Khartoum in large numbers

at the beginning of September, and throughout that month and

the first half of October they are to be seen under bushes and

among the lime trees in nearly every garden in the town. They

are exceedingly tame, keeping principally to the ground, and hop¬

ping away under cover rather than flying when approached. They

have a harsh, ‘ churring’ alarm note. Many of them arrive in a

weak and exhausted condition and, judging from the number of

their feathers seen lying about, frequently fall victims to cats.

O11 three or four occasions I have known them enter houses.

About the middle of October their numbers decrease, and I have

110 note of them later than October 28th, on which date I shot a

specimen in 190S. Their disappearance is then complete until

the next September, and they seem to winter south of the Sudan

altogether. At any rate, I have never come across them after

this, though I have collected on many trips, as far south as

Mongalla on the White Nile, south to Fazogli on the Blue Nile,

in the Bahr-el-Ghazal Province, in Kordofau, and on the Red

Sea coast. I have never seen a single Sprosser in the spring,

either in the Nile Valley or on the Red Sea coast—our two great

migration routes — and my belief is that this species returns

north 011 a totally different line, perhaps west of the Sahara.


Daulias luscinia , the Common Nightingale, hardly seems

to pass along this part of the Nile Valley at all. In eleven years

I have only obtained one example, a female, shot on the Bahr-

el-Ghazal River 011 January 12th, 1907. On the Red Sea Coast

near Suakin, where I have collected in the spring when Black¬

caps, Barred and Garden Warblers, Thrushes, Chats, Redstarts,



