CUCKOOS AND NIGHTINGALES. T HROUGH all Western Europe and Asia Minor,
from the groves of " old Colonus " and the temples of Baal-bee, to the valleys of Andalusia and the combes of the Surrey hills, the nightingales are now in song, awakening alike, as they have for a thousand summers, the fancies of dreaming poets and the delight of the least imaginative of mankind. The poets of old set their own interpretation on the song of the nightingale. To them it was ever the voice of lamentation and mourning ; Philomel weeps for Itys, and never varies the refrain. Modern fancy is truer to the facts of Nature. To us, as to Keats, the nightingale is the- " Light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singing of summer in full-throated ease."
In a side-glen of the Surrey hills, running down to the deep stream of the River Wey, lies the Nightingale Valley. Always faithful to its ancient summer haunt, there are few villages without some garden or coppice in which the nightingale may not be heard in those counties which it visits; but this particular spot has always seemed to the writer its most favoured and best-loved home. Two tiny streams cut their way down the steep and sandy hills, and unite in a pool which almost fills the bottom of the hollow. The tall granary and buildings of a solitary farm rise almost on the margin of the pool, and give back an eeho which the nightingales in the copses and thickets on the hillsides, and in the May-trees which overhang the water, never weary of answering. The copses are full of the birds, and in the still nights a score of voices may be heard, first completing the full chorus of their song, then last and listening for a moment, until the echo repeats the 1.ast notes, when its challenge is answered by a rush of tumultuous melody. Probably the faintness of the echo's refrain leads them to suppose that it is the song of a bird in some distant grove, and engages the nightingales in common chorus against their unknown rival. se The 43'3°k-birds usually arrive in the valley at the end of the a:41nd week in April, and spend at least a week in practising tarad recalling their song. At such times they are extremely . distant ana the writes has often watched from a few y practising the singers, who show far less nervousness in fore a stranger than is often observed in human vocalists, The first long-drawn notes are commonly run through without difficulty, but the subsequent trills and changes can no training by e be acquired without practice and the nightingale than by a human singer. The bird stops, and repeats the song, sometimes carrying it on with a rush which seems to promise success, and then breaking down helplessly. Now and then, the complete song is sung so low as to be almost inaudible, and then triumphantly repeated with the utmost powers which h the bird can exert. Prowling bird-catchers, with their traps and mealworms, are wont to find their way to Nightingale Valley at this season and the owner of the farm finds it necessary to give orders for the protection of the nightingales es equally with the pheasants nesting in the copses. By the end of May, the birds are sitting ; and the cocks sing to them throughout the night. Hard as it is to find a nightingale's nest, the number in the valley is such that the writer has seen as many as six in a day. The eggs and nest of the nightingale are both so beautiful, and so unlike those of any other English bird, that it is impossible to mistake them when once seen. The site is nearly always chosen among the brown and dead oak or Spanish-chestnut leaves which lie on the ground among the brambles or wild-rose roots, or have drifted into some hollow of a hank. Sometimes, though rarely, the position is open to every passer-by, with nothing to conceal it but the resemblance of the nest and sitting bird, with her russet back, to the surrounding colour. The outer circle of the nest is built of dead oak-leaves, so arranged that the rim of the cup is broken by their projections, a mode of concealment practised, so far as the writer knows, by the nightingale alone of English birds, though a common device in the nests of tropical species. The lining is made with the skeleton-leaves that have fallen in the previous winter, and completed with a few strands of horse- hair, on which the shining olive-brown eggs are laid. There are few prettier sights than that of a nightingale on her nest. The elegance of the bird, the exquisite shades of the russet and grey of its plumage, set in the circle of oak-leaves among the briars, suggest a natural harmony and refinement in keeping with the beauty of its unrivalled song.
The popular feeling in England in favour of the cuckoo is as unaccountable as the affection for the nightingale is natural and unquestioned. It is certainly of recent growth, for the old writers formed a just estimate of its character, and con- demned it alike in metaphor and the plainest prose. Even to hear its voice was an evil omen :- " It were a common tayle,
That it were better to hear the nightingale Much rather than the lewd cuckoo sing."
Such is Chaucer's comment on the note, which, probably from its association with the coming of spring, is now so eagerly listened for in rural England. The cuckoo's coming is the certain sign that winter is over. " One swallow does not make a summer, but one cuckoo does make a spring," should be the amended form of the old proverb. And this is'the burden of the ancient catch :— " Summer is yeomen in ; Loud sings cuckoo."
As for the date of his coming, that is as uncertain as the arrival of the season itself. " He did use to come on Ware- ham Fair," said a Dorsetshire labourer the other day ; "but now he seems to come when he likes."
But except as a weather-sign, the writer fails to find one redeeming point in the life of the English cuckoo ; and if the cuckoo-lore of the Old World, over which it roams from Lapland to the Equator, and from Connaught to Kam- schatka, could be compared, it should bear out this conclusion. He is a " vagrom man," as Dogberry would say : a vulgarian, a disreputable parasite. Yet he is in some ways an interesting creature, and the world has always a fondness for interesting scamps. He is an impostor so complete, that the mere cata- logue of his deceptions rouses curiosity. From the egg, which imitates in size and colour that of the harmless sky- lark, to the full and fraudulent plumage of maturity, which clothes the indolent cuckoo in the garb of the fierce and active sparrow-hawk, he lives for ever under false colours. Though he looks like a hawk, he is an insect-eater; he has two toes pointing forward and two backward, like a woodpecker but he cannot climb. He is da Topvog',—de void of natural affection ; and never works for his wife, any more than she does for her children. There was once a cuckoo in Germany who hatched her own eggs ; and another has been known to feed its young one, when the foster-mother, a hedge-sparrow, had been killed. But these instances are rare exceptions to the rule of cuckoo-life. In Spain, a large cuckoo is the especial parasite of the magpie, and lays eggs which almost exactly resemble those of the latter bird. Yet, in America, there is an honest cuckoo, which builds a nest though a bad one, and hatches its own eggs. This is the " cow-bird," so called from its note, " ICowe—kowe—kowe," which is uttered with gradually increasing speed until it somewhat resembles the bubbling notes at times uttered by our cuckoo. The American cuckoo will even decoy visitors from its nest by the affectionate arts which so many birds make use of to divert danger from their young to themselves.
It would be interesting to know which plan "pays best," from the cuckoo point of view, and to try the result of contact with European cuckoo morals on the honest American cousin. If birds have the power of comparison, the contrast must be hard to bear ; for the career of the disreputable young cuckoo is one of worldly success from his first chipping the shell to his late departure from our shores. He is born with a Special contrivance in the structure of his back to enable him to hoist his foster-brothers out, and never rests till he has done so, and made things quiet and comfortable. The foster-parents then pamper the young cuckoo with a silly infatuation, due, ap- parently, to its size and appetite. "See what a fine child we have got!" is the obvious feeling of a pair of wag- tails or hedge-sparrows fussing round a young cuckoo, which, though fully fledged, is too lazy to feed itself. Even other young birds, if placed in the same cage with a young cuckoo, soon begin to feed it. Yet after all the spoiling which it receives, the cuckoo is a thoroughly ill-conditioned, surly, and spiteful bird. A young one, which was daily fed by a thrush no older than itself which was confined in the same cage, pecked the poor bird's eye out because it ventured to eat a worm itself. Buffon speaks of a tame cuckoo which would follow its owner, flying from tree to tree, sometimes leaving him for a time to visit the cherry orchards. We much doubt whether cuckoos eat cherries. All the tame cuckoos we have known have been uninteresting and unfriendly birds. At the Zoo, where English wild birds and migrants are tamed in the large aviaries, and nightingales, wagtails, warblers, and even a woodcock live together on the best of terms, the cuckoos are wild and as much disliked by the other birds in captivity as they are when free. But the sounds of summer would be the poorer for the loss of the cuckoo's note. It is beyond all others the sylvan bird, certain to be found among the lofty oak groves and the glades of noble parks ; and its cry, heard even before the dawn, brings crowding memories of the lakes and woods of Selborne and Woolmer Forest, of Windsor Park, of Brockenhurst, and the wide woodlands of the South.
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