} 
NIGHTINGALE. 83 
abundant. It has also frequented the Regent’s Park, Hyde 
Park, and Kensington Gardens, near London. 
In Scotland a pair are said by Mr. Robert D. Duncan to 
have bred in Calder Wood, in West Lothian, in the year 1826. 
In Ireland it has hitherto been altogether unknown. 
Woods, groves, plantations, and copses are its favourite 
resort, but it is also found in gardens, even in the neigh- 
bourhood of London, and also among thick hedges in shady 
and sheltered situations. 
Insects of various sorts, spiders, and earwigs furnish them 
with food. The young are fed principally with caterpillars. 
The Nightingale favours us with its company about the 
middle or end of April, sometimes it is said, not until May, 
the males arriving about a week or ten days -before the 
females. It has been known to arrive on the Sutfolk coast 
as early as the 7th. of that month. It departs again in 
August or September. It would appear that its migration 
is made in an almost due south and north direction, few 
being found in Devonshire, and none in Cornwall, Wales, or 
Ireland, nor any, it is said, in Brittany, or in the Channel 
Islands. Many have been introduced into the western parts, 
and others into Scotland by Sir John Sinclair, but they have 
never returned the following year—the birth-place possesses 
an overpowering attraction for some, but the Nightingale takes 
a still higher ground, and will pine in any place but that in 
which it ought to have been born. ‘They seem to travel 
by night, and to arrive singly, one by one. The older 
birds too are thought to arrive before the younger ones. 
It its habits it is not shy, and, as is too well known, may 
be kept in confinement: unfortunately they are easily captured. 
Bechstein has known one which thus lived for twenty-five 
years. Those taken on their first arrival are said to do 
better than those taken afterwards—slavery 1s somewhat the 
same in birds as in the human species. The right-minded 
cnan and the right-minded ornithologist will reprobate both. 
These birds return to their native haunt, and each one appears 
to exercise propietorship over its own more peculiar domain. 
{n one instance, related by Mr. J. D. Salmon, of Thetford, in 
the ‘Naturalist,’ old series, volume ii, page 52, they have been 
known to breed in confinement, namely, at Norwich, in the 
year 1833. The female laid five eggs, which were all hatched; 
and though the male died, the female did not relax her 
cares, but successfully reared three young. | 
