THE NIGHTINGALE 17 



creepers trained round the veranda of a cottage. I have seen it 

 also placed in a niche in a wall intended for the reception of a vase, 

 in a bee-hive stored away on the rafters of an outhouse, and under 

 a wispUf straw accidentally left on the ground in a garden. It is 

 usually composed of dry leaves, roots, bents, and moss, lined with 

 hair and wool, and contains five or six eggs. The young birds are 

 of a brown tint, and have the feathers tipped with yellow, which 

 gives them a spotted appearance. Until they acquire the red breast, 

 they are very unlike the parents, and might be mistaken for young 

 Thrushes, except that they are much smaller. They may be often 

 observed in gardens for many days after they have left the nest, 

 keeping together, perching in the bushes, and clamorous for food, 

 which the old birds bring to them from time to time. It is said, 

 that only one brood is reared in a year, but this I am inclined 

 to doubt, having observed in the same locality families of young 

 birds early in the spring, and late in the summer of the same year. 

 Towards the end of August, the young birds acquire the distinctive 

 plumage of their species, and are solitary in their habits until the 

 succeeding spring. The call-notes of the Redbreast are numerous, 

 and vary beyond the power of description in written words ; the song 

 is loud, and it is needless to say, pleasing, and possesses the charm 

 of being continued when aU our other feathered songsters are mute. 

 The red of the breast often has a brighter tint, it is occasionally 

 almost a carmine red. The late Lord Lilford told the editor such 

 were often birds that had been bred on the Continent. Numbers 

 of young birds come across the sea to us each autumn. 



THE NIGHTINGALE 



DAULIAS LUSCfNIA 



Upper plumage russet brown ; tail bright rust-red ; under plumage buffish 

 white ; flanks pale ash colour. Length six and a quarter inches ; 

 breadth nine and a half inches. Eggs uniform olive-brown. 



The southern, eastern, and some of the midldnd counties of Eng- 

 land, enjoy a privilege which is denied to the northern and western 

 — an annual visit, namely, from the Nightingale. It is easy enough 

 to understand why a southern bird should bound its travels north- 

 wards by a certain parallel, but why it should keep aloof from 

 Devon and Cornwall, the climate of which approaches more closely 

 to that of its favourite continental haunts than many of the districts 

 to which it unfailingly resorts, is not so clear. Several reasons 

 have been assigned — one, that cowslips do not grow in these coun- 

 ties ; this may be dismissed at once as purely fanciful ; another 

 is, that the soil is too rocky : this is not founded on fact, for both 

 DfiyojQ-and CornwaUabound in localities which would be to Nightin- 

 gales a perfect Paradise, if they would only come ; a third is, that 

 the proper food is not to be found there : but this reason cannot 



B B. C 



