Birds of Town and Village | Page 4

heard in the
daytime--not one bird, but a dozen--in different parts of the village; but
he sang not at night. This I set down to the fact that the nights were
dark and the weather unsettled. But later, when the weather grew
warmer, and there were brilliant moonlight nights, he was still a silent
bird except by day.
I was also a little surprised at his tameness.
On first coming to the village, when I ran after every nightingale I
heard, to get as near him as possible, I was occasionally led by the
sound to a cottage, and in some instances I found the singer perched
within three or four yards of an open window or door. At my own
cottage, when the woman who waited on me shook the breakfast cloth
at the front door, the bird that came to pick up the crumbs was the
nightingale--not the robin. When by chance he met a sparrow there, he
attacked and chased it away. It was a feast of nightingales. An elderly
woman of the village explained to me that the nightingales and other
small birds were common and tame in the village, because no person
disturbed them. I smile now when recording the good old dame's
words.
On my second day at the village it happened to be raining--a warm,
mizzling rain without wind--ind the nightingales were as vocal as in
fine bright weather. I heard one in a narrow lane, and went towards it,
treading softly, in order not to scare it away, until I got within eight or
ten yards of it, as it sat on a dead projecting twig. This was a twig of a
low thorn tree growing up from the hedge, projecting through the
foliage, and the bird, perched near its end, sat only about five feet
above the bare ground of the lane. Now, I owe my best thanks to this
individual nightingale, for sharply calling to my mind a common
pestilent delusion, which I have always hated, but had never yet raised
my voice against--namely, that all wild creatures exist in constant fear
of an attack from the numberless subtle or powerful enemies that are
always waiting and watching for an opportunity to spring upon and
destroy them. The truth is, that although their enemies be legion, and
that every day, and even several times on each day, they may be
threatened with destruction, they are absolutely free from apprehension,

except when in the immediate presence of danger. Suspicious they may
be at times, and the suspicion may cause them to remove themselves to
a greater distance from the object that excites it; but the emotion is so
slight, the action so almost automatic, that the singing bird will fly to
another bush a dozen yards away, and at once resume his interrupted
song. Again, a bird will see the deadliest enemy of its kind, and unless
it be so close as to actually threaten his life, he will regard it with the
greatest indifference or will only be moved to anger at its presence.
Here was this nightingale singing in the rain, seeing but not heeding me;
while beneath the hedge, almost directly under the twig it sat on, a
black cat was watching it with luminous yellow eyes. I did not see the
cat at first, but have no doubt that the nightingale had seen and knew
that it was there. High up on the tops of the thorn, a couple of sparrows
were silently perched. Perhaps, like myself, they had come there to
listen. After I had been standing motionless, drinking in that dulcet
music for at least five minutes, one of the two sparrows dropped from
the perch straight down, and alighting on the bare wet ground directly
under the nightingale, began busily pecking at something eatable it had
discovered. No sooner had he begun pecking than out leaped the
concealed cat on to him. The sparrow fluttered wildly up from beneath
or between the claws, and escaped, as if by a miracle. The cat raised
itself up, glared round, and, catching sight of me close by, sprang back
into the hedge and was gone. But all this time the exposed nightingale,
perched only five feet above the spot where the attack had been made
and the sparrow had so nearly lost his life, had continued singing; and
he sang on for some minutes after. I suppose that he had seen the cat
before, and knew instinctively that he was beyond its reach; that it was
a terrestrial, not an aerial enemy, and so feared it not at all; and he
would, perhaps, have continued singing if the sparrow had been caught
and instantly killed.
Quite early in June I began to feel just a little cross with