NIGHT-SINGERS. A LMOST any bird heard singing at night is popularly
set down as a nightingale. This shows a deplorable want of knowledge of British birds, for among them are quite a number of night-singers. Besides these, there are others which are active and assertive through the hours of darkness, and_ which make the woods resound with their crying and calling.
Standing in one of the rides of a woodland glade just as day is departing, one is pierced and thrilled by a perfect storm of song. This loud-swelling volume of sound softens as the darkness deepens, and then only the polyglot wood-thrush is heard. The stem of the silver birch has ceased to vibrate to the blackbird's whistle, and as darkness comes a new set of sounds take possession of the night. Crake answers crake from the long grass, wood-owls hoot. and herons scream. One of the greatest night-helps to the gamekeeper in staying the depredations of poachers is the lapwing. It is the lightest sleeper of the fields, starting up from the fallows and scream- ing upon the slightest alarm. Poachers dread the detection of this bird, and the keeper closely follows its cry. A hare rushing wildly past will put the plover away from its roost; and when hares act thus in the darkness, there is generally some good cause for it. The skylark and wood-lark are both occasional
night-singers, and it is quite common to hear cuckoos calling in the densest darkness.
One of the essentially night-singers is the little grasshopper warbler. Shy and retiring in its habits, it is rarely found far distant from aquatic vegetation. Moist situations are most congenial, as among the plants that affect them it finds its winged food. Although generally affecting such spots as indicated, it sometimes seeks out considerable elevations. These are covered with coarse grass, bents, furze, and heather; and here, far into the night, it reels out its continuous, cricket- like song. It returns to the same spot year after year, and although from these the particular notes may often be heard, the singer itself is nowhere to be seen. At the least noise, it drops from the support from which it may be depending, into the grass beneath, and then is silent. The song is long continued, but the sounds are constantly shifting, marking the restless track of the singer on the night. It needs no stretch of imagination to detect in the notes of this species the similarity to the grasshopper, and the !‘ monotonous whirr, like the spinning of a fishing-reel," is fairly expressible of the bird's song. A perfect master of intricate maze and covert, it is never far from them. Even though it has ven- tured beyond its accustomed limits, its vigilance sends it back at the least noise, though its retreat is rarely observed, for, instead of flying, it creeps closely, never rising when alarmed.
The peculiarly wild whistle of the curlew comes from out the night sky, and the swifts screech for an hour after the darkness has fallen. But perhaps the most interesting of the night-birds is the goatsucker, or nightjar. We are by the covert-side, and a strange churring sound comes from the glades. Waiting silently beneath the bushes, it approaches nearer and nearer until a loud flapping is heard among the nut-bush tops. The object approaches quite closely, and it is seen that the noise is produced by a large bird striking its wings together as they meet behind. Even in the darkness it may be detected that each wing is crossed by a definite white bar. Had we the bird in our hand, we should see that it was a connecting-link between the owls and the swallows, having the soft plumage and noiseless flight of the one, and the wide gape of the other. The object of the noise it produces among the trees is probably to disturb from the bushes the large night-flying moths upon which it feeds. The name of goatsucker the bird has from a superstitious notion that it sucks goats and cows,— founded probably upon the fact of its wide gape. It is certain that these birds may often be seen flitting about the bellies of cattle as they stand knee-deep in the summer pastures. The reason of this is obvious, as there insect-food is always abundant. The nightjar rarely, unless disturbed, comes abroad during the day, but obtains its food at twilight and dusk. Upon the limestone-covered fells, it conforms marvellously to its environment, it being almost impossible to detect the curiously mottled plumage as the bird basks upon the grey stones, not more still than itself. Here it lays its eggs, often without the slightest semblance of a nest, and frequently upon the bare rock. Among naturalists, quite a peculiar interest attaches to the bird, inasmuch as it is fur- nished with a remarkable claw, the use of which is guessed at rather than known. This claw is serrated on its inner edge, and from actual experiments made upon nightjars in captivity, we should surmise that its use is to free the long whiskers from the soft, silvery dust which usually covers the bodies of night- flying moths. Certain it is that this substance gets upon the whiskers of the bird, and that the long hairs referred to are combed through the serrated claw. About the mouth, the goatsucker is very swallow-like. It has a bullet-shaped head, large eyes, and a wide gape. Like the swallows, too, it has a weak, ineffective bill and weak feet. This is explained by the fact that the bird, except when nesting, is rarely seen on the ground, and that it captures its insect-prey on the wing. At evening it makes a loud churring noise, from which it has its provincial names of dor-hawk and eve-churr.
If the cuckoo tells her name to all the hills, so does the sedge-warbler to the fluted reeds. And, like that " wandering voice," our little bird seems dispossessed of a corporeal existence, and on through summer is " still longed-for, never seen,"—and this though common enough, for you may wander long among the willows, with a bird in every bush, without one showing outside the corral of boughs. Wherever vegetation grows tall and luxuriant, there the "reed-wren" may be found. It travels in the night : you go out some May morning, and the rollicking intoxication of the garrulous little bird comes from out the self-same bush from which you missed it in autumn. From the time it. first arrives, it begins to sing louder and louder as the warm weather advances, especially in the evenings. Then it is that it listens to the loud- swelling bird-choir of the woods, selecting a note from this and another from that ; for the sedge-warbler is an imitator, a mocking bird, and reproduces in fragments the songs of many species. The little mimic runs up and down the gamut in the most riotous fashion, parodying not only the loud, clear whistle of the blackbird, but the wholly differing soft, sweet notes of the willow-wren. This is kept up through the night, and the puzzle is, when the little musi- cian sleeps. Our angler-friends call this bird the " fisher- man's nightingale." If the sedge-warbler ceases its song through any hour of the day or night, a clod thrown into the bushes will immediately set it going again. Yet what can be said of a song that a clod of earth will call forth P Some- times for a moment it is sweet, but never long-sustained. In the North, where there are few ditches, the species frequents river-banks and the sides of meres ; in the South, it abounds everywhere in marshy places. Here the rank grass swarms with them; the thicker the reed-patch or willow, the more birds seem to be there. With perfect silence, a distant view of the bird is sometimes obtained at the top of the bushes, as it flits after an insect. As it runs up and clings to the tall green stalks, it is pleasing both in form and colour. Among the grasses and water-plants it has its game-preserves. Water-beetles, ephemera, and the teeming aquatic insects constitute its food. To watch through a glass the obtaining of these is most interesting. Reed-sparrow and reed-wren are pretty provincial names of this bird, each expressive enough.
Another night-singer is the blackcap. The lute-like mellow- ness and wild sweetness of its song give it a high place among British warblers,—next only to the nightingale. The blackcap has neither the fullness nor the force, but it has all and more than the former's purity. This little hideling, with its timid obtrusiveness, never strays far from cultivation.
One provision it requires, and this is seclusion. Its shy and retiring habits teach it to search out dense retreats, and it is rarely seen. If observed on the confines of its corral of boughs, it immediately begins to perform a series of evolutions, until it has placed a dense screen of brushwood between itself and the observer.
Many times have we heard the round, full, lute-like plaintive- ness of the nightingale,—sounds that seem to seize and ingrain
themselves in the very soul, that " make the wild blood start in its mystic springs." To us, the delicious triumph of the bird's song is in its utter abandon. The lute-like sweetness, the silvery liquidness, the bubbling and running over, and the wild, gurgling "jug, jug, jug !" To say this, and more— -
that the nightingale is a mad, sweet polyglot, that it is the sweetest of English warblers, the essence and quint- essence of song, that it is the whole wild-bird achievement in one—these are feeble, feeble ! This " light-winged dryad of the trees " is still " in some melodious spot of beechen-green and shadows numberless, singing of summer in full-throated ease,"—and there she will remain. Unlike the songs of some of our warblers, hers can never be reproduced. Attempt to translate it, and it eludes you,—only its meagre skeleton remains. Isaac Walton, in his quaint eloquence, tries to say what he felt :—" The nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs,, the sweet decants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say,—` Lord, what music hest Thou provided for the saints in Heaven, when Thou affordest bad, men such music on. earth ! ' "
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