96 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



nerves, and was proud of it! On a recent visit 

 to Seaford I failed to hear the bird when walk- 

 ing about the town, and after two or three days 

 went into the shop to enquire about it. They 

 told me it was dead — that it had been dead over 

 a year; also that many visitors to Seaford had 

 missed its song and had called at the shop to 

 ask about the bird. The strangest thing about 

 its end, they said, was its suddenness. The bird 

 was singing its loudest one morning, and had been 

 at it for some time, filling the whole place with 

 its noise, when suddenly, in the middle of its 

 song, it dropped down dead from its perch. 



To drop dead while singing is not an unheard 

 of, nor a very rare occurrence in caged birds, and 

 it probably happens, too, in birds living their 

 natural life. Listening to a nightingale, pouring 

 out its powerful music continuously, as the lark 

 sings, one sometimes wonders that something does 

 not give way to end the vocalist's performance 

 and life at the same instant. Some such incident 

 was probably the origin of the old legend of the 

 minstrel and the nightingale on which Strada 

 based his famous poem, known in many languages. 

 In England Crawshaw's version was by far 



