File:Birds through the year (1922) (14755102392).jpg

Identifier: birdsthroughyear00thom (find matches)
Title: Birds through the year
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Thomas, William Beach, Sir, 1868-1957 Collet, Anthony Keeling, 1877-
Subjects: Birds -- Great Britain Birds -- Pictorial works
Publisher: London, Edinburgh, T.C. and E.C. Jack, ltd
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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YOUNG NIGHTINGALES . . . ARE SPOTTED WITH DULL YELLOW on three sides to fit a hole. Most nightingales eggs areuniform olive-green or olive-brown, and vary little in shade;but some show traces of a buff ground under dense andalmost confluent markings of yellowish brown. These re-semble the darkest type of the robins egg. Occasionallynightingales eggs occur of a pale sea-green ; but this colouris merely an indication of weakness or disease in the birdwhich laid them, like the pale green or blue eggs sometimeslaid by blackbirds, chaffinches, linnets, and several other 11.0281 16 122 SPRING birds. Bluish green seems to be the normal colour of anatrophied egg-shell in the case of most species ; such eggsare usually very thin shelled, and often yolkless or infertile. When the copse has just been cut, and is too low to givethe nightingale shelter, it is the great flowering time of theprimroses, woodspurge, red robin, and all the plants which
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delight in plentyof spring sun-shine. Theseplants lie halfdormant during the darkand shady years of the copsescycle, and spring in fresh vigourfirst spring after the cutting,floor of the copse grows as bright asa gay mosaic from the middle of Apriluntil June ; and among the flowers theleaves on the young stems of copse-wood shoot vividly green. Bugle raisesits blue spires by the turfy ruts, drawing the rare bee-hawk moths to hover at the blossoms ; herb-parisspreads in some copses its four large equal leaves, with onefringed purple blossom sitting in their midst. Commonerthan the herb-paris, but local, is Solomons seal, with itsdrooping arch hung with a long row of little greenish whitebells. Blue speedwells abound in the grass, and here andthere broad beds of wild garlic or ramsons exhale a rankbreath when the wind stirs the white blossoms and glossy SOLOMONS SEAL THE HEART OF THE COPSE 123 leaves. A garlic bed, when the flowers have withered, has adeceptive resemblance in all but sm

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