“And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part To keep thy sharp woes waking.”
“The bird forlorn, That singeth with her breast against a thorn.”
And Pomfret, writing towards the close of the seventeenth century, says:
“The first music of the grove we owe To mourning Philomel’s harmonious woe; And while her grief in charming notes express’d, A thorny bramble pricks her tender breast.”
The origin of such an odd notion it is not easy to ascertain, but I suspect Sir Thomas Browne was not far from the truth when he pointed to the fact that the Nightingale frequents thorny copses, and builds her nest amongst brambles on the ground. He inquires “whether it be any more than that she placeth some prickles on the outside of her nest, or roosteth in thorny, prickly places, where serpents may least approach her?”[13]
In an article upon this subject published in the “Zoologist” for 1862 (p. 8029), the Rev. A. C. Smith has narrated the discovery on two occasions of a strong thorn projecting upwards in the centre of the Nightingale’s nest. It cannot be doubted, however, that this was the result of accident rather than design; and Mr. Hewitson, in his “Eggs of British Birds,” has adduced two similar instances in the case of the Hedge Sparrow.
The nest of the Nightingale is a very loosely-made structure, composed for the greater part of dead leaves, and placed upon a hedge bank, generally at the root of some stout shrub or thorn. The eggs, usually five in number, are, like the bird itself, of a plain olive-brown colour. The young Nightingales are spotted like young Robins, having the feathers of the upper portions of the plumage tipped with buff colour. In some respects the Nightingale assimilates very much in habits to the Robin; and advantage has been taken of this in localities where the Nightingale is unknown to introduce its eggs into the nests of Robins, with a view to having the young reared in the neighbourhood, and so induced to return to it. But although, as regards hatching and rearing, the plan has been successful, the birds have never returned to the place of their birth. For some inexplicable reason, a limit appears to be set to the migration of the Nightingale, which has no parallel in the case of other migrants.