W1CHTERICH ON NIGHTINGALES. 



225 



ful, or more, daily, for each bird, ought to be the principal food, so 

 long as the nightingale is in song ; but when done singing, the com- 

 position, called German paste, may be given. It is made in the fol- 

 lowing manner, of much better quality than what is sold in the shops. 



Take four fresh eggs, boiled very hard, a quarter of a pound of 

 white pease meal, and about a table spoonful of good salad oil — if the 

 least rancid, it will not do. The eggs must be grated down very fine, 

 and mixed with the meal, and olive oil. The whole is then pressed 

 through a tin cullender, to form it into grains, like small shot, then 

 placed in a frying pan, set over a gentle fire, and gradually stirred 

 with a broad knife, till it be partially roasted and dried, the test of 

 which will be its fine yellowish brown colour. 



All insect-eating birds will soon learn to eat this food, upon which 

 they may be kept all the year ; except when they appear drooping and 

 unwell, or at moulting time, when they ought to have a few meal 

 worms twice or thrice a day, While they are in song also, they ought, 

 always to have about a dozen or more meal-worms, in the course of 

 every day, with ants' eggs, either fresh or dried. I have had several 

 nightingales, however, which have sung when fed upon the paste alone, 

 without meal- worms. 



From the sort of food given by M. Bechstein, I am not at all sur- 

 prised so many of his birds died when first confined. In order to 

 make a fresh caught bird take to feed, he advises to dip it in water, 

 and after it has shaken and dried itself, it will, he says, be rendered 

 hungry, and will readily feed. By my method of giving meal-worms 

 and ants' eggs, I never found a single bird refuse to feed, so that the 

 cage be properly covered with a white handkerchief. 



The net for catching nightingales which I recommend is made with 

 a semicircular hoop of iron wire, about as thick a swan's quill, raised 

 upon a cross stick like the common brick trap. Meal-worms are fixed 

 upon the cross stick with pins or thorns, and when the bird pulls these 

 the stick is deranged and the net falls. 



There are two varieties of the nightingale, one which sings bo(h in 

 the night and in the day, and one which sings in the day only. I have 

 found only one that sung in the night out of twenty or thirty caged 

 nightingales. The night singers are considerably larger and darker 

 coloured, that is, not so rusty red as the day singers, and they are, 

 according to M. Bechstein, more partial to high ground, while the 

 day singers frequent valleys and hollow ways. When it is particularly 

 wished to have a night singing bird, the haunt of one must be dis- 



vol. i. — no. v. (may, 1833.) Q 



