Now! Then! Peter Inchbald observes nightingales in Harrogate for the first time, but their popularity is their undoing

21 April 1883: Peter Inchbald observes nightingales in Harrogate for the first time, but their popularity is their undoing

“Nesting haunt of a nightingale near Harrogate” – where exactly? (Fortune 1907).

William Eagle Clarke and Thomas Hudson Nelson. 1901/05. Daulias luscinia (L.). Nightingale. The Birds of Yorkshire, Vol. 4. Leeds: Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union. Get it:

Excerpt

The nest, a remarkably flimsy structure, was built in a tuft of nettles and contained four eggs. The young were fully fledged on the 16th June and left the nest the next day, one egg remaining unhatched. Some days before they left the nest the notes of the male bird were changed into a call-note, and an angry jarring croak, which it uttered on a near approach. The young resemble young robins in the brown mottling of the feathers on the back. They were impatient of food and uttered harsh little notes till they were satisfied. The next year (1884) they appeared again on the 20th of April; this year they were evidently disturbed in their nesting operations by the crowds of people that visited the copse nightly. In 1885 the male bird only was seen, and he disappeared early in June. This year (1886) no nightingale visited us, nor did I hear of any in the neighbourhood. I fear they have said good bye to our copse on the Crimple which suited them so well, till they were so incessantly disturbed.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:

ER: East Riding
GM: Greater Manchester
NR: North Riding
NY: North Yorkshire
SY: South Yorkshire
WR: West Riding
WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Is this Richard Jefferies’ Yorkshire nightingale?

Its appreciation of Yorkshire is extremely arbitrary. In some parts it is often to be met with; in others its occurrence is very rare. A few years ago a nightingale came to a wood in the neighbourhood of one of the large manufacturing towns. The intelligence was soon noised about, and the wood got to be so popular that an enterprising omnibus proprietor started a vehicle that took passengers ‘to the Nightingale’, at sixpence a head. The bird soon left that wood, and a little boy who got up into a tree and imitated it, was very near being stoned in the moonlight by some angry passengers who were disappointed at the failure of their excursion. (Jefferies 1886/04/10)

Between urban pollution and bird-catchers, nightingales never stood much a chance:

In 1879 a Nightingale was heard singing in Mosley Wood, Horsforth, some ten or twelve years before ; it was shot by the keeper a short time after.

[…]

Geo. Roberts observed that ” on the 13th of May one commenced singing in a small wood called Bushy Cliff, situate about five miles south-east of Leeds …. and began to sing each evening about half-past ten, and continued in song till four in the morning. I, along with several others, walked about in the adjacent meadows most of the nights of the 15th and 16th hastening to it. … I was somewhat surprised at its tameness ; on the third evening many boys and young men from villages round about assembled, and created some uproar, without, however, disturbing it from its perch, and the game-watchers got within a few yards of it. Early in the morning of the 17th, four days after its appearance, it was captured with limed twigs by two Leeds bird fanciers : a few meal-worms were thrown down among the twigs, and in less than five minutes after the bait was laid, the bird was secured.”

[…]

In 1846, one at Colonel Gunter’s, Wetherby Grange, where, alas, I saw a blackguard at two o’clock in the morning with a cage, and two or three nights afterwards its song ceased, so I presume he caught it.

(Clarke 1907)

John Le Mesurier may have been the only nightingale ever to (ahem) sing in Berkeley Square:

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Original

Near Harrogate, Mr. Peter Inchbald told me he first noticed the Nightingale on the 21st of April, 1883, and that for three consecutive years it had made its appearance in the same copse in which it first nested. He believed the same pair of birds came back year after year. The nest, a remarkably flimsy structure, was built in a tuft of nettles and contained four eggs. The young were fully fledged on the 16th June and left the nest the next day, one egg remaining unhatched. Some days before they left the nest the notes of the male bird were changed into a call-note, and an angry jarring croak, which it uttered on a near approach. The young resemble young robins in the brown mottling of the feathers on the back. They were impatient of food and uttered harsh little notes till they were satisfied. The next year (1884) they appeared again on the 20th of April; this year they were evidently disturbed in their nesting operations by the crowds of people that visited the copse nightly. In 1885 the male bird only was seen, and he disappeared early in June. This year (1886) no Nightingale visited us, nor did I hear of any in the neighbourhood. I fear they have said good bye to our copse on the Crimple which suited them so well, till they were so incessantly disturbed. In 1884 a pair attempted to nest in the Spa grounds in Harrogate, and attracted much attention. Their fate, I am told, is shrouded in mystery. — W.E.C.

258 words.