THE NIGHTINGALE.
Philomela, or the Nightingale, is the head of the somewhat large
bird-family of Warblers, and is the most renowned of all feathered
songsters, though some judges think the garden-ousel exceeds it in
mellowness, and the thrush in compass of voice, but that, in every
other respect, it excels them all. For my part, however, I think no
singing-bird is equal to it; and listening to it when in full song, in
the stillness of a summer’s night, am ready to say with good old Izaak
Walton:—
“The nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet
music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind
to think that miracles had not ceased. He that at midnight, when the
weary labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often
heard, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and
falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted
above earth and say, ‘Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the
saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!’”
In colour, the upper parts of the nightingale are of a rich brown;
the tail of a reddish tint; the throat and underparts of the body,
greyish-white; the neck and breast, grey; the bill and legs, light
brown. Its size is about that of the garden warblers, which it
resembles in form—being, in fact, one of that family. Thus, the most
admired of all singers—the subject of poets’ songs and eulogies, the
bird that people walk far and wide to listen to, of which they talk for
weeks before it comes, noting down the day of its arrival as if it were
the Queen or the Queen’s son—is yet nothing but a little insignificant
brown bird, not to be named with the parrot for plumage, nor with
our little goldfinch, who always looks as if he had his Sunday suit
on. But this is a good lesson for us. The little brown nightingale,
with his little brown wife in the thickety copse, with their simple
unpretending nest, not built up aloft on the tree branch, but humbly
at the tree’s root, or even on the very ground itself, may teach us
that the world’s external show or costliness is not true greatness. The
world’s best bird-singer might have been as big as an eagle, attired
in colours of blue and scarlet and orange like the grandest macaw. But
the great Creator willed that it should not be so—his strength, and
his furiousness, and his cruel capacity were sufficient for the eagle,
and his shining vestments for the macaw; whilst the bird to which was
given the divinest gift of song must be humble and unobtrusive, small
of size, with no surpassing beauty of plumage, and loving best to hide
itself in the thick seclusion of the copse in which broods the little
mother-bird, the very counterpart of himself, upon her olive-coloured
eggs.
[Sidenote: _The Philomela of Surrey._]
Mr. Harrison Weir has given us a sweet little picture of the
nightingale at home. Somewhere, not far off, runs the highroad, or it
may be a pleasant woodland lane leading from one village to another,
and probably known as “Nightingale-lane,” and traversed night after
night by rich and poor, learned and unlearned, to listen to the
bird. In our own neighbourhood we have a “Nightingale-lane,” with its
thickety copses on either hand, its young oaks and Spanish chestnuts
shooting upwards, and tangles of wild roses and thick masses of
brambles throwing their long sprays over old, mossy, and ivied stumps
of trees, cut or blown down in the last generation—little pools
and water courses here and there, with their many-coloured mosses
and springing rushes—a very paradise for birds. This is in Surrey,
and Surrey nightingales, it is said, are the finest that sing. With
this comes the saddest part of the story. Bird-catchers follow the
nightingale, and, once in his hands, farewell to the pleasant copse
with the young oaks and Spanish chestnuts, the wild rose tangles, the
little bosky hollow at the old tree root, in one of which the little
nest is built and the little wife broods on her eggs!
Generally, however, the unhappy bird, if he be caught, is taken soon
after his arrival in this country; for nightingales are migratory, and
arrive with us about the middle of April. The male bird comes about
a fortnight before the female, and begins to sing in his loneliness
a song of salutation—a sweet song, which expresses, with a tender
yearning, his desire for her companionship. Birds taken at this time,
before the mate has arrived, and whilst he is only singing to call and
welcome her, are said still to sing on through the summer in the hope,
long-deferred, that she may yet come. He will not give her up though
he is no longer in the freedom of the wood, so he sings and sings, and
if he live over the winter, he will sing the same song the following
spring, for the want is again in his heart. He cannot believe but that
she will still come. The cruel bird-catchers, therefore, try all their
arts to take him in this early stage of his visit to us. Should he be
taken later, when he is mated, and, as we see him in our picture, with
all the wealth of his little life around him, he cannot sing long. How
should he—in a narrow cage and dingy street of London or some other
great town—perhaps with his eyes put out—for his cruel captor fancies
he sings best if blind? He may sing, perhaps, for a while, thinking
that he can wake himself out of this dreadful dream of captivity,
darkness, and solitude. But it is no dream; the terrible reality at
length comes upon him, and before the summer is over he dies of a
broken heart.
It is a curious fact that the nightingale confines itself, without
apparent reason, to certain countries and to certain parts of England.
For instance, though it visits Sweden, and even the temperate parts
of Russia, it is not met with in Scotland, North Wales, nor Ireland,
neither is it found in any of our northern counties excepting
Yorkshire, and there only in the neighbourhood of Doncaster. Neither
is it known in the south-western counties, as Cornwall and Devonshire.
It is supposed to migrate during the winter into Egypt and Syria. It
has been seen amongst the willows of Jordan and the olive trees of
Judea, but we have not, to our knowledge, any direct mention of it in
the Scriptures, though Solomon no doubt had it in his thoughts, in his
sweet description of the spring—“Lo, the winter is past, the rain is
over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing
of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” A
recent traveller in Syria tells me that she heard nightingales singing
at four o’clock one morning in April of last year in the lofty regions
of the Lebanon.
[Illustration:
NIGHTINGALES AND NEST. [Page 40.
]
[Sidenote: _Sir John Sinclair’s Attempt._]
There have been various attempts to introduce the nightingale into such
parts of this country as it has not yet frequented; for instance, a
gentleman of Gower, a sea-side district of Glamorganshire, the climate
of which is remarkably mild, procured a number of young birds from
Norfolk and Surrey, hoping that they would find themselves so much at
home in the beautiful woods there as to return the following year. But
none came. Again, as regards Scotland, Sir John Sinclair purchased a
large number of nightingales’ eggs, at a shilling each, and employed
several men to place them carefully in robins’ nests to be hatched. So
far all succeeded well. The foster-mothers reared the nightingales,
which, when full-fledged, flew about as if quite at home. But when
September came, the usual month for the migration of the nightingale,
the mysterious impulse awoke in the hearts of the young strangers, and,
obeying it, they suddenly disappeared and never after returned.
Mr. Harrison Weir has given us a very accurate drawing of the
nightingale’s nest, which is slight and somewhat fragile in
construction, made of withered leaves—mostly of oak—and lined
with dry grass. The author of “British Birds” describes one in his
possession as composed of slips of the inner bark of willow, mixed with
the leaves of the lime and the elm, lined with fibrous roots, grass,
and a few hairs; but whatever the materials used may be, the effect
produced is exactly the same.
In concluding our little chapter on this bird, I would mention that
in the Turkish cemeteries, which, from the old custom of planting a
cypress at the head and foot of every grave, have now become cypress
woods, nightingales abound, it having been also an old custom of love
to keep these birds on every grave.