276 SYLVIAD.S.
a male may be kept in song for three months together; and
I remember to have heard it stated by a successful keeper of
Nightingales, that a bird of his had sung upon one hundred
and fourteen successive days.
The localities frequented by the Nightingale are woods
having thick undergrowth, low coppices, plantations, and
hedgerows. The extensive grounds around London which are
cultivated by market-gardeners, are favourite haunts with this
bird; low damp meadows near streams are also frequented ;
and M. Vieillot says they are partial to the vicinity
of an echo. From the pairing time to the hatching of the
young, the male continues in full song, not only singing
at intervals throughout the day, but frequently serenading
his partner during the night; and Pennant says, the name of
the bird is derived from our term night, and the Saxon word
galan, to sing. The nest of this bird is almost always
placed on the ground : advantage is taken of a slight depression
in the soil, some dead oak and hornbeam leaves are
deposited therein, with a few dried bents and portions of
rushes, lined internally towards the bottom with fine fibrous
roots; but so loosely constructed, that it is generally necessary
to pass thread or string several times round the whole nest,
before removing it, if desirous of preserving its form. The
eggs are four or five in number, of a uniform olive brown
colour, and measuring ten lines in length by eight lines and a
half ill breadth. The eggs are produced in May, and the
young are hatched in June. From this period the song of
the male is heard no more ; a single low croaking note is
uttered as a warning should danger threaten, occasionally
changing to a sharp snapping noise, made with the beak,
which is considered to be a note of defiance. Colonel Montagu
took a nest of young Nightingales early in June, and
placing them in a cage, observed that the parent birds fed
them principally with small green caterpillars. The adult
n i g h t i n g a l e . 277
birds feed on insects of various sorts, flies, moths, spiders,
and earwigs.
When we consider that this bird extends its visits during
the summer as far north as Russia and Sweden, its very
limited range in this country is unaccountable. It is found
in Sussex, Hampshire, Dorsetshire, and the eastern part only
of Devonshire, along the line of our south coast. I t has
been heard about Tinmouth and Exmouth, but no farther
west in that direction. In North Devon it has been heard
near Barnstaple, but not in Cornwall or Wales. A gentleman
of Gower, which is the peninsula beyond Swansea,
procured from Norfolk and Surrey, a few years back, some
scores of young Nightingales, hoping that an acquaintance
with his beautiful woods and their mild climate "would induce
a second visit; but the law of Nature was too strong
for him, and not a single bird returned. Dyer, in his
Grongar Hill, makes the Nightingale a companion of his
muse in the vale of Towey or Carmarthen ; but this is a
poetical license, as the bird is not heard there. The Nightingale
has not hitherto been heard in any part of Ireland.
In a note by Mr. Blyth, in an edition of White’s Sel-
borne, it is observed, “ The Nightingale, I think, appears to
migrate almost due north and south, deviating but a very
little indeed either to the right or left. There are none in
Brittany, nor in the Channel islands, Jersey, Guernsey, &c.;
and the most westward of them probably cross the Channel
at Cape La Hogue, arriving on the coast of Dorsetshire, and
thence apparently proceeding northward, rather than dispersing
towards the west; so that they are only known as
accidental stragglers beyond at most the third degree of
western longitude, — a line which cuts off the counties of
Devonshire and Cornwall, together with Wales and Ireland.”
Montagu says it is plentiful in Somersetshire , but it is only
occasionally heard now in the northern part of that county.