The Naturalist's Diary

For APRIL 1819.

Again the wood, and long-withdrawing vale,
In many a tint of tender green are drest,
Where the young leaves, unfolding, scarce conceal
Beneath their early shade the half-formed nest
of finch or woodlark; and the primrose pale,

And lavish cowslip, wildly scattered round,
Give their sweet spirits to the sighing gale.

C. SMITH.

THIS pleasing season of the year invigorates Nature through her inmost recesses, and flings over every object an air of gaiety and cheerfulness. The weather is mild, with gentle showers, affording to vegetables an abundant supply of water, which is so indispensably necessary to their existence. This is the general character of April; yet we have sometimes very sharp frosts in this month, as well as in its successor, MAY.

Oft brushed from Russia's wilds, a cutting gale
Rises, and scatters from his humid wings

The clammy mildew, or, dry-blowing, breathes
Untimely frost, before whose baleful blast

The full-blown Spring through all her foliage shrinks
Joyless and dead.

THOMSON.

The arrival of the swallow about the middle of the month announces the approach of summer. There are four species of the hirundines that visit England; they arrive in the following order: (L.) The chimney swallow (hirundo rustica), which builds its nest generally in chimneys, in the inside, within a few feet of the top, or under the eaves of houses. (2.) The house martin (hirundo urbica), known by its white breast and black back, glossed with blue, visits us in great numbers. It builds under the eaves of houses, or close by the sides of the windows. (3.) The sand martin (hirundo riparia) is the smallest of our swallows, as well as the least numerous of them. It frequents the steep, sandy banks, in the neighbourhood of rivers;

in the sides of which it makes deep holes, and places the nest at the end. (4.) The swift (hirundo apus) is the largest species, measuring nearly eight inches in length. These birds build their nests in lofty steeples and high towers, and sometimes under the arches of bridges. For poetical illustrations, see our five former volumes.

Young moles are now to be found in the nests, and, therefore, this is a good time for destroying them. There are commonly four or five in a nest, and they are naked when first born. Weasels and stoats are great enemies to moles, and frequently get into their holes, kill the inhabitants, and take up their own abode there. Thus do the several sorts of vermin help to keep up a kind of balance of power among them.

The next bird which appears, after the swallow, is that sweet warbler, the motacilla luscinia, or nightingale. Although the nightingale is common in this country, it never visits the northern parts of our island, and is but seldom seen in the western counties of Devonshire and Cornwall, or in Wales; though it annually visits Sweden. It leaves us sometime in the month of August, and makes its regular return in the beginning of April. In England, nightingales frequent thick hedges and low coppices, and generally conceal themselves in the middle of some leafy bush. They commence their song in the evening, and continue it the whole night'.

That beautiful little bird, the wryneck (jynx torquilla) makes its appearance about the middle of the month, preceding the cuckoo by a few days. The well-known cry of the cuculus canorus is heard soon after the wryneck, and ceases the latter end of June; its stay is short, the old cuckoos being said to quit

For many interesting particulars of the nightingale, as well as numerous poetical illustrations, see T.T. for 1817, p. 110; for 1816, p. 117; for 1815, p. 139; and for 1814, p. 99.

K

this country the latter end of June. See more of the cuckoo in T.T. for 1817, p. 113.

The other summer-birds of passage which arrive this month, make their appearance in the following order: the ring-ousel (turdus torquatus), the redstart (motacilla phoenicurus), frequenting old walls and ruinous edifices; the yellow wren (motacilla trochilus); the swift, already noticed; the whitethroat (motacilla sylva); the grasshopper lark (alauda trivialis), the smallest of the lark kind; and, lastly, the willow-wren, which frequents hedges and shrubberies, and feeds on insects, in search of which it is continually running up and down small branches of trees. The house-wren destroys many pernicious insects. The beauty, simplicity, and innocence of the winged tribes, attract particular regard and attention: we even converse with them, and address them in the language of benevolence.

Again the balmy zephyr blows,

Fresh verdure decks the groves;
Each bird with vernal rapture glows,
And tunes his notes to love.

Ye gentle warblers! hither fly,
And shun the noontide heat;
My shrubs a cooling shade supply,
My groves a safe retreat.

Here freely hop from spray to spray,
Or weave the mossy nest;

Here rove and sing the live-long day,
At night here sweetly rest.

Amidst this cool translucent rill

That trickles down the glade,

Here bathe your plumes-here drink your fill,
And revel in the shade.

No schoolboy rude to mischief prone

E'er shows his ruddy face,

Or twangs his bow or hurls a stone
In this sequestered place.

Hither the vocal thrush repairs,
Secure the linnet sings;

The goldfinch dreads no slimy snares
To clog her painted wings.

Sad Philomel! ah, quit thy haunt,

Yon distant woods among;

And round my friendly grotto chaunt
Thy sweetly plaintive song.

Let not the harmless red-breast fear,
Domestic bird! to come,

And seek a sure asylum here
With one that loves his home.

My trees for you, ye artless tribe,
Shall store of fruit preserve:
O let me thus your friendship bribe,
Come, feed without reserve!

For you these cherries I protect-
To you these plums belong:
Sweet is the fruit that you have peckt,
But sweeter far your song!

In a former volume (T.T. for 1816, p. 120) we have spoken at length on the nightingale and other birds of song, noticing the superiority of England in this respect over the continent of America. The observation is lately confirmed by Mr. Cobbett, in his • Year's Residence in the United States of America,' in a passage in which the politician has almost forgotten himself into poetry:-There are two things which I have not yet mentioned, and which are almost wholly wanting here, while they are so amply enjoyed in England,-the singing-birds and the flowers. Here are many birds in summer, and some of very beautiful plumage. There are some wild flowers, and some English flowers in the best gardens; but, generally speaking, they are birds without song, and flowers without smell. The linnet (more than a thousand of which I have heard warbling upon one scrubbed oak on the sand hills in Surrey), the skylark, the goldfinch, the woodlark, the nightingale, the bullfinch, the blackbird, the thrush', and all the rest of the singing tribe, are wanting in these beautiful

'Mr. Cobbett has, however, omitted to notice the mocking-thrush (see T.T. for 1816, p. 120), as well as numberless beautiful shrubs, peculiar to some parts of the new continent.

woods and orchards of garlands. When these latter have dropped their bloom, all is gone in the flowery way. No shepherd's rose, no honeysuckle, none of that endless variety of beauties that decorate the hedges and the meadows in England. No daisies, no primroses, no cowslips, no blue-bells, no daffodils, which, as if it were not enough for them to charm the sight and the smell, must have names, too, to delight the ear. All these are wanting in America.'

A contemporary writer, comparing the songs of nature with those of the opera, beautifully observes :The opera-singer sings to please the audience, not herself, and does not always like to be encored in it; but the thrush, that awakes at daybreak with its song, does not sing, because it is paid to sing or to please others, or to be admired or criticised. It sings because it is happy: it pours the thrilling sounds. from its throat, to relieve the overflowings of its own heart-the liquid notes come from and go to the heart, dropping balm into it, as the gushing spring revives the traveller's parched and fainting lips. That stream of joy comes pure and fresh to the longing sense, free from art and affectation; the same that rises over vernal groves, mingled with the breath of morning, and the perfumes of the wild hyacinth, that waits for no audience, that wants no rehearsing, that exhausts its raptures, and still

Hymns its good God, and carols sweet of love.'

The tenants of the air are, in this month, busily employed in forming their temporary habitations, and in rearing and maintaining their offspring.-See our last volume, p. 104-1061.

'On seeing a Boy with a BIRD'S NEST.
Yon feathered pair, how blest are they!
Their snug retreat no fears molest,
Until the schoolboy strolls that way,
And fills with pain each parent's breast.