Waller says:
Thus the wise nightingale that leaves her home,
Pursuing constantly the cheerful spring,
To foreign groves does her old music bring.
There are some counties in England where the bird is not
found. It is abundant in Warwickshire, Gloucester and the
Isle of Wight. It is not found in Scotland, Derbyshire or
Yorkshire or Devon or Cornwall. Attempts to introduce it
in those places have failed. The reason is said to be that
its insect food does not exist there.
I utterly failed to hear the nightingale, although I was
very close upon his track. On the night of the fifth of
June at Freshwater, close to Tennyson's home, we were taken
by a driver, between eleven and twelve at night, to two copses
in one of which he said he had heard the nightingale the night
before; and at the other they had been heard by somebody,
from whom he got the information, within a very few days.
But the silence was unbroken, notwithstanding our patience
and the standing reward I had offered to anybody who would
find one that I could hear. Two different nights shortly
afterward, I was driven out several miles past groves where
the bird was said to be heard frequently.
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