86 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
Though British birds are as seldom as possible referred 
to"^^ yet it would be almost unpardonable to pass by^ without 
some notice^ the sweet songster who 
" On bloomy spray 
Warbles at eve, when all the woods are still." 
As the nightingale spends only four months of the year 
in the British Islands^ and over the larger portion of them 
is quite a stranger except by repute, it may be as well to 
allude to it. The nightingale [Sylvia Luscmia), 
In russet brown bedight," 
has long been the theme of all our poets : pages, or rather 
volumes, might be filled with extracts of its praises. Like 
most fine songsters, it is a plainly-plumaged bird, not much 
bigger than a robin, and clothed with brown feathers, lighter 
on the under parts. It is fond of caterpillars and insects, 
and feeds chiefly on them, finding great store of such food 
in our southern English woods, some of which are filled 
with its liquid notes. Coleridge^s favourite bird at Highgate 
was the nightingale. In Caen Wood and the gardens on 
the slope about Mr. Gilman^s house he loved to hear them ; 
he refers particularly to *'^that giddy voluminous whirl of 
* See another volume of this series, 'Popular British Ornithology,' by 
P. H. Gosse, for the natural history of the British birds. 
