Perching Birds. 
The Common Nightingale. 
Europe comprises the greater 
part of Central and Southern 
Europe, but it is not found in 
the north. 
Arriving about the middle of 
April, the males precede the 
females by at least a week, and 
even in the early days of May 
the males may be heard in the 
copses of the south of England, 
four or five singing at one time, 
showing that thus early in the 
year the birds have not yet 
separated for their breeding- 
quarters. When the nesting- 
place is selected, no bird can be 
more difficult of observation, for 
it frequents the most secluded 
thickets and hedge-rows, and is very seldom seen, though the liquid notes of the 
male may be heard throughout the day and often far into the night. The nest is 
a ragged affair, of dead leaves, principally oak-leaves, and lined with grasses or a 
little horse-hair. The eggs are from 
four to six in number, of an olive-brown 
or olive-green colour, with sometimes a 
little clouding of olive-brown dots round 
the larger end. 
The Robin is 
such a familiar bird 
that any detailed 
description of its 
plumage or its 
habits seems to be unnecessary in a little 
treatise like the present. It is a common 
bird throughout the greater part of the 
British Islands, but a good many Robins 
leave us in the Autumn, when old and 
young birds, the latter mostly moulting 
from the spotted-dress into the adult red- 
breasted plumage, may be seen and 
heard among the orchards and planta- 
tions on our southern coasts, where The Redbreast. 
THE 
REDBREAST. 
( Erithacus 
rubccitla.) 
