One thing is remarkable—that, after some years, the old holes are forsaken and new ones bored; perhaps because the old habitations grow foul and fetid from long use, or because they may so abound with fleas, as to become untenantable. This species of swallow, moreover, is strangely annoyed with fleas; and we have seen fleas, bed fleas, (Pulex irritans,) swarming at the mouths of these holes, like bees on the stools of their hives.—White’s Selborne.
Nightcrow, s. A bird that cries in the night.
Night-fishing, s.
Night-fishing is carried on when the river is low, and the night moonless. The poacher, with a gaff and torch, selects some gravelly ford—for there, by a law of nature, the salmon resort, to form beds in the stream, wherein to deposit their ova; and they continue working on the sand, until they are discovered by torch-light, and gaffed by the plunderer. Hundreds of the breeding fish are annually thus destroyed; and although the greater fisheries may be tolerably protected, it is impossible to secure the mountain streams from depredation.—Wild Sports.
Nightingale, s. A bird that sings in the night with remarkable melody.
One of the finest songsters of the feathered race, generally visiting us, about London, the beginning of April; in Somersetshire it seldom arrives till the middle or latter end of that month, and sometimes not till the beginning of May; Devonshire, and Cornwall, and some other counties, it does not visit at all: it generally leaves us again the beginning of September. Its song, when wild, is very fine, but lasts but a few weeks; to have it in the greatest perfection is to have a good bird in a cage, where, if it be a very kindly one, it will begin singing the beginning of December, and continue till June. I had a very fine one that only left off singing the latter end of June last; it began again a little in September, and the 1st of December it was in full song, and continued to sing through the whole of the month, and nearly all day long, as fine as if at Midsummer, and would have continued on had not the frost set in so severe; when singing in a cage none of the soft notes are lost, they are all heard quite clear, which is not the case when heard in the woods or hedges.
The best way to be certain of a good nightingale is to get one that is just caught in spring; for there is no dependence on a young one bred up from the nest, or a young brancher, except it be kept with a good old bird, to learn its proper notes from; a young one being apt to catch all it hears, good or bad, and to be deficient of many of its natural ones. I had one three years, and it never sang worth any thing; the year before last I turned it out, and it continued in the gardens round the house until it left the country in autumn; it returned back to the same place last spring, where I recognised it by its bad song, and it continued about the same place all the summer, and bred up a nest of young ones. A female that I had also been keeping for six years, to see if she would breed, I also turned out with him, but whether she came back and was partner in the nest I cannot say, as I had no mark to know her by: this female I kept four years, and it never attempted to sing; the fifth year it sang frequently, a pretty soft nightingale’s note. I have found that the case with several female birds; they do not sing till they become aged; but it is not a general rule, as I have had a female willow wren that sang when quite young.
I treat my nightingales in exactly the same manner as the before-mentioned birds, which is at variance with the bird-fanciers’ method, who feed them on grated beef and egg, and German paste; but I have never heard of any thing being kept many years on that food: the German paste I do not approve of at all, as the maw-seeds, honey, sugar, and such out of the way ingredients, I am convinced must be very injurious to their health. The best thing to keep them in good health and spirits, is to give them as much insect food as possible, and there are scarcely any insects they will refuse, except the common earth-worm and the hairy caterpillars; they are particularly fond of ants and their eggs, for which they will leave any other food; they are also very partial to all sorts of smooth caterpillars, earwigs, crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, common maggots, and meal-worms; but there is nothing that all the birds of this tribe are so fond of, as the young larvæ in the combs of wasps and hornets—they will even eat them after they become winged. I have, when a boy, kept nightingales, blackcaps, the greater pettychaps, and whitethroats, for two months at a time, on nothing else.—White of Selborne.
Nimble, a. Quick, active, ready, speedy, lively, expeditious.
Ninepins, s. A play where nine pieces of wood are set up on the ground to be thrown down by a bowl.