Noise and Song • It is said, with undoubted truth,
that birds can be stirred to song by the stimulus of a 'cello or fiddle. The experiment has been made successfully with the nightingale. Other than musical sounds seem to produce a like result. The other day at a time when no birds sang in the garden, an aeroplane flew overhead, and instantly close to where I sat a willow-warbler and hedge-sparrow broke into song, and a robin followed their lead. I have never heard nightingales in fuller song than when thunder began to roll in the distance ; though it was possible that the stimulus was not the noise, but the so-called sheet lightning. The place, on the Pang in Berkshire, has been associated with that burst of song ever since. Similarly, I can scarcely think of the beautiful village of Bibury apart from a missel thrush that sang with singular emphasis from a tree by the bridge over the Coln. So, too, does one patch of reed on the Lea—or Lee—continuously ring with the " thick chattered cheeps " of the sedge-warbler, which is at least as ardent a night singer as any nightingale.
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