^6 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
defined, and sing defiance at one another without 
crossing their legitimate boundaries. There is one 
extraordinary low, deep note, sustained for several 
seconds at a time, which occurs in the middle 
of the song with the most amazing effect, ap- 
pearing at first to be produced by some different 
bird altogether ; the Nightingale seems only to 
utter this when it is raised to the highest pitch 
of song, by fair spring weather and the keen voice 
of a rival. I have listened to many Nightingales 
every summer, but it is nine or ten years since con- 
tinued residence in a Nightingale country last 
enabled me to hear this note. The birds generally 
begin to build early in May, though in a very early 
spring (that of 1893) I have known the nest 
finished and an egg laid by the end of April. The 
nest is loosely built of dry leaves, generally oak- 
leaves, scantily lined with horse-hair, and is 
generally very well concealed on or close to the 
ground among brambles, bushes, or nettles and 
other herbage. The four or five eggs are of a deep 
coppery or greenish-brown, without any spots or 
markings, except when very occasionally they show 
dense coffee-coloured mottlings on a slightly paler 
ground of tawny yellowish-brown. In this variety 
an approximation is seen to the darkest variety of 
the Robin's egg. Occasionally Nightingales' eggs 
are found of a pale sea-green colour ; but like the 
