Birds of Town and Village | Page 5

the
nightingales, for they almost ceased singing; and considering that the
spring had been a backward one, it seemed to me that their silence was
coming too soon. I was not sufficiently regardful of the fact that their
lays are solitary, as the poet has said; that they ask for no witness of
their song, nor thirst for human praise. They were all nesting now. But
if I heard them less, I saw much more of them, especially of one

individual, the male bird of a couple that had made their nest in a hedge
a stone's throw from the cottage. A favourite morning perch of this bird
was on a small wooden gate four or five yards away from my window.
It was an open, sunny spot, where his restless, bright eyes could sweep
the lane, up and down; and he could there also give vent to his
superfluous energy by lording it over a few sparrows and other small
birds that visited the spot. I greatly admired the fine, alert figure of the
pugnacious little creature, as he perched there so close to me, and so
fearless. His striking resemblance to the robin in form, size, and in his
motions, made his extreme familiarity seem only natural. The robin is
greatly distinguished in a sober-plumaged company by the vivid tint on
his breast. He is like the autumn leaf that catches a ray of sunlight on its
surface, and shines conspicuously among russet leaves. But the clear
brown of the nightingale is beautiful, too.
This same nightingale was keeping a little surprise in store for me.
Although he took no notice of me sitting at the open window, whenever
I went thirty or forty yards from the gate along the narrow lane that
faced it, my presence troubled him and his mate only too much. They
would flit round my head, emitting the two strongly contrasted sounds
with which they express solicitude--the clear, thin, plaintive, or wailing
note, and the low, jarring sound--an alternate lamenting and girding.
One day when I approached the nest, they displayed more anxiety than
usual, fluttering close to me, wailing and croaking more vehemently
than ever, when all at once the male, at the height of his excitement,
burst into singing. Half a dozen notes were uttered rapidly, with great
strength, then a small complaining cry again, and at intervals, a fresh
burst of melody. I have remarked the same thing in other singing birds,
species in which the harsh grating or piercing sounds that properly
express violent emotions of a painful kind, have been nearly or quite
lost. In the nightingale, this part of the bird's language has lost its
original character, and has dwindled to something very small.
Solicitude, fear, anger, are expressed with sounds that are mere lispings
compared with those emitted by the bird when singing. It is worthy of
remark that some of the most highly developed melodists--and I am
now thinking of the mocking-birds--never, in-moments of extreme
agitation, fall into this confusion and use singing notes that express
agreeable emotions, to express such as are painful. But in the

mocking-bird the primitive harsh and grating cries have not been lost
nor softened to sounds hardly to be distinguished from those that are
emitted by way of song.

III
By this time all the birds were breeding, some already breeding a
second time. And now I began to suspect that they were not quite so
undisturbed as the old dame had led me to believe; that they had not
found a paradise in the village after all. One morning, as I moved softly
along the hedge in my nightingale's lane, all at once I heard, in the old
grassy orchard, to which it formed a boundary, swishing sounds of
scuttling feet and half-suppressed exclamations of alarm; then a
crushing through the hedge, and out, almost at my feet, rushed and
leaped and tumbled half-a-dozen urchins, who had suddenly been
frightened from a bird-nesting raid. Clothes torn, hands and faces
scratched with thorns, hat-less, their tow-coloured hair all disordered or
standing up like a white crest above their brown faces, rounded eyes
staring--what an extraordinarily wild appearance they had! I was back
in very old times, in the Britain of a thousand years before the coming
of the Romans, and these were her young barbarians, learning their
life's business in little things.
No, the birds of the village were not undisturbed while breeding; but
happily the young savages never found my nightingale's nest. One day
the bird came to the gate as usual, and was more alert and pugnacious
than ever; and no wonder, for his mate came too, and with them four
young birds. For a week they were about the cottage every day, when
they dispersed, and one