Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/537

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I never once met with this bird in Herefordshire, and it is certainly not in the habit of singing at my doors in Leicestershire, though in most years it turns up in comparative abundance in a district with which I am very familiar—I refer to Maidwell, in Northamptonshire, only about fifteen miles distant from my late home. The best Nightingale year, so to designate it, I remember in Leicestershire was in 1893. I knew of four pairs of birds that were nesting in the course of that summer in and about the plantations which tend so materially to enhance the beauty of the landscape in the immediate neighbourhood of Keythorpe.

One of the greatest treats I ever enjoyed in connection with the Nightingale occurred in the year above mentioned, when a Nightingale condescended to pay my grounds a visit and remain the best part of the spring months cheering us with its liquid notes by day and night. It was said at the time that fifteen years had elapsed since one had been heard in the village of Skeffington.

I am glad to add it found shelter and protection in my garden for its nest, and, though the young stayed about in the bushes for a short time after they could fly, the visit was not repeated in 1894, so the assertion that Nightingales always return to the same haunts to nidificate, if unmolested, seems to require considerable qualification, for, though my experience of the species is, I fully confess, limited, I never knew a single instance of a particular haunt in Leicestershire being frequented two years in succession. Curiously enough, in connection with my Nightingale, I had only a short time previously seen hounds pull a Fox down in positively the very bushes where I had heard it on its first appearance, and where subsequently it seemed to spend the greater part of its time. It never sang on cold wet nights, and its aversion to exhibit itself in public was palpable and pronounced.

One has only to watch a Nightingale for a few moments to become impressed with the marked resemblance its movements and actions bear to those of the Redbreast. On the other hand, I have found it—unlike its allied species—none too willing to admit of a close inspection, and have frequently been amused at the mental struggle that has obviously gone on between its desire