142 
NATURE NOTES. 
general style of song is, no doubt, the same everywhere, the 
cultivated ear, trained to bird-notes, can at once tell that the 
song of the thrush is finer in one district than it is in another ; 
that the flute-like notes of the blackbird are richer here than 
there ; and that the jug-jug of the nightingale is here, perhaps, 
he may clearly be able to say, the most rapturous of all. And 
among these pines you can listen to them all in a beauty of 
melody unsurpassed. 
It is pleasant here to look out for the coming of the spring 
migrants, and to catch their notes on their first arrival. In 
some small garden 3’ou may watch the coming in of the first 
whitethroat or warbler, and mark the familiarity with which, 
after a long flight from distant Africa, the little bird seems to 
recognise the spot where it was born, or where, perhaps, it might 
have reared a brood. Pleasant is it, too, to see the lark soaring 
and singing in circles over some small railway station, or to catch, 
in so unusual a place, the well-known note of the nightingale, and 
to learn from a bird-loving railway porter that the bird breeds 
yearly at a fitting spot near the station. The arrival of the 
swallows, martins and swifts can be well noted on the cliffs, 
along which they love to career in joyous course. The cuckoo, 
like the nightingale, does not seem to love the close neighbour- 
hood of the sea, where, perhaps, these birds do not find the food 
they like best : they are to be heard and seen better a little way 
inland. 
If we take a wider sweep around, we may come on moors 
and sand-wastes, with stunted pines and shrubby undergrowths, 
the only things here nourished by the sandy and gravelly soil. 
Here in some cultivated slope we may hear the landrail ; and 
here, certainly, skimming past us like a phantom, we may see or 
hear the night jar, finding abundant food among the moths and 
night-insects that are bred in multitudes on these breezy heaths. 
You may possibly drop on a brood of night-jars, fully feathered, 
but, not yet having tried their wings, only able to scamper away 
among the fir-twigs and heather-shoots. Among the springs 
and rills that ooze out in the hollows, we may find the favourite 
haunts of the woodcock, though the bird is getting, year by year, 
scarcer here, as in other regions. 
In walking about the district we may note many interesting 
aspects of bird-life. In some parts, the cooings of the ringdove 
or woodpigeon are very pleasant to listen to. This is the bird 
that the poets call the cushat dove, the name being probably 
derived from its note ; and by this name it figures in Scott’s 
couplet : 
“ In answer cooed the cushat dove. 
Her notes of peace, and rest, and love.” 
The notes are not always, we may observe, notes of peace; 
for the birds (presumably the males, the fighting sex,) seem 
often to enjoy a combat ; and then they bow their heads to the 
