Birds. 



8161 



tangles of bramble, and, in one instance only, at more tban a foot from the ground, in 

 a wild rose. Besides its being a very unusual thing to find the nest high up in a 

 hedge (where thorns are most numerous), the bottom is, as a rule, nearly an inch 

 thick, and very closely packed with dead leaves, bass and the dried stems of legu- 

 minous plants, through all which it would require a very long thorn to reach. I am 

 afraid Shakspeare is not much of an authority in Ornithology; take, for example, the 

 following lines on the cuckoo, where the fool in King Lear says : — 



" The hedgesparrow fed the cuckoo so long, 

 That it had its head bit off by its young." 



There is a similar allusion in the play of Henry IV. As also it is the cock bird that 

 sings and the hen that sits, the various lines quoted by your correspondent can be no 

 argument for the thorn in the nest itself. 1 see the birds singing almost daily 

 throughout^May, and it is a very exceptional thing, even when there may be very tall 

 overgrown hedges, to find them there ; they will choose in preference a hazel, birch 

 or other low-spreading bush or young tree. I once found a nest every egg in which 

 was different, beginning with very dark blue with black spots, and going through 

 slighter and slighter varieties till the one last laid was of the usual olive-brown 

 colour.— John W. Ford; Enfield Old Park, July 21, 1862. 



The Nightingale at Manchester. — "The readers of the 'Zoologist' have most likely 

 read the account of an extraordinary appearance of nightingales near Manchester : 

 this, if true, is very uncommon," says your talented correspondent H. W. Newman 

 (Zool. 8090). I should say so too; but I question its truth. In 1852 there was a 

 nightingale heard in the Vale of Crumpsall, near Manchester, and great numbers of 

 persons went to hear it. The little songster sang without intermission during the 

 summer nights, and its song could be heard in any part of the Harpurhey Cemetery, 

 and upon the hill sides both on the Harpurhey and Crumpsall side of the river Esk. 

 I and a Manchester naturalist were at some trouble to ascertain what the songster 

 was, and several times followed the sound to the edge of a large reservoir, 

 belongiug to a paper-mill, and amongst the reeds and flags which grew in it the 

 songster, without a doubt, was singing, and we both were convinced that the bird was 

 a reed warbler {Salicaria arundinacea). The inhabitants of a village near Hull once 

 were possessed of a nightingale, and many people went to hear it ; but, in this case, a 

 naturalist from Hull succeeded in finding the nest of a reed warbler, and the bird 

 having lost its nest, and being disturbed by the rude assemblies, forsook the place. 

 I have no doubt but the Manchester nightingales are either reed warblers or sedge 

 warblers, both of which will sing through the long summer nights. The reed warbler 

 is a very fine songster, and the stillness of the summer nights renders its song doubly 

 sweet. The sedge warbler is very common on some parts of the Ouse, and in this 

 neighbourhood, amongst the willows that skirt the banks of the many brooks and 

 rivulets. — John Ranson ; York. 



[I very much incline to concur in this opinion, having been often astonished at 

 the great mistakes made as to the song of the nightingale. — E. Newman.'] 



Singular Variety of the Chaffinch's Eggs. — A correspondent (Zool. 8391) describes 

 a variety of the chaffinch's egg, and wishes to know if such a variety is of common 

 occurrence. For his information I beg to state that on the 29th of April, 1861, 1 took 

 a nest of the chaffinch containing three eggs, which exactly agree with the description 

 he gives, being pale blue without spots ; the blue, however, not so bright as in the 

 VOL. XX. 2 X 



