Nightingale
Encyclopedia
The Nightingale also known as Rufous and Common Nightingale, is a small passerine
bird
that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush
family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher
, Muscicapidae. It belongs to a group of more terrestrial species, often called chats
.
insectivorous species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe
and south-west Asia
, but is not found naturally in the Americas
. The distribution is more southerly than the very closely related Thrush Nightingale
Luscinia luscinia. It nests on the ground within or next to dense bushes. It winters in southern Africa
. At least in the Rhineland
(Germany
), the breeding habitat
of nightingales agrees with a number of geographical
parameters.
, at 15–16.5 cm (5.9–6.5 in) length. It is plain brown above except for the reddish tail. It is buff to white below. Sexes are similar. The eastern subspecies
L. m. hafizi and L. m. africana have paler upperparts and a stronger face-pattern, including a pale supercilium
.
Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The name has been used for well over 1,000 years, being highly recognizable even in its Anglo-Saxon form – 'nightingale'. It means 'night songstress'. Early writers assumed the female sang when it is in fact the male. The song is loud, with an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles. Its song is particularly noticeable at night because few other birds are singing. This is why its name includes "night" in several languages. Only unpaired males sing regularly at night, and nocturnal song is likely to serve attracting a mate. Singing at dawn, during the hour before sunrise, is assumed to be important in defending the bird's territory. Nightingales sing even more loudly in urban or near-urban environments, in order to overcome the background noise. The most characteristic feature of the song is a loud whistling crescendo, absent from the song of Thrush Nightingale. It has a frog-like alarm call.
evokes the Nightingale in the Odyssey, suggesting the myth of Philomela and Procne (one of whom, depending on the myth's version, is turned into a nightingale ). This myth is the focus of Sophocles'
tragedy, Tereus
, of which only fragments remain. Ovid
, too, in his Metamorphoses, includes the most popular version of this myth, imitated and altered by later poets, including Chrétien de Troyes
, Geoffrey Chaucer
, John Gower
, and George Gascoigne
. T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land
" also evokes the Nightingale's song (and the myth of Philomela and Procne). Because of the violence associated with the myth, the nightingale's song was long interpreted as a lament.
The Nightingale has also been used as a symbol of poets or their poetry. Poets chose the nightingale as a symbol because of its creative and seemingly spontaneous song. Aristophanes'
Birds and Callimachus
both evoke the bird's song as a form of poetry. Virgil
compares a mourning Orpheus to the “lament of the nightingale”. John Milton
and others of the 17th century renewed the symbol. In "L'Allegro" Milton characterizes Shakespeare as a nightingale warbling “his native woodnotes wilde” (line 136), and Andrew Marvell
in his "On Paradise Lost" subsequently described Milton's Paradise Lost
in similar terms:
In Sonnet 102
Shakespeare compares his love poetry to the song of the nightingale (Philomel):
During the Romantic
era the bird's symbolism changed once more: poets viewed the nightingale not only as a poet in his own right, but as “master of a superior art that could inspire the human poet”. For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. Coleridge and Wordsworth saw the nightingale more as an instance of natural poetic creation: the nightingale became a voice of nature. John Keats'
"Ode to a Nightingale
" pictures the nightingale as an idealized poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats longs to write. Invoking a similar conception of the nightingale, Shelley
wrote in his “A Defense of Poetry":
Passerine
A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...
bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush
Thrush (bird)
The thrushes, family Turdidae, are a group of passerine birds that occur worldwide.-Characteristics:Thrushes are plump, soft-plumaged, small to medium-sized birds, inhabiting wooded areas, and often feed on the ground or eat small fruit. The smallest thrush may be the Forest Rock-thrush, at and...
family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher
Old World flycatcher
The Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae is a large family of small passerine birds mostly restricted to the Old World. These are mainly small arboreal insectivores, many of which, as the name implies, take their prey on the wing.-Characteristics:...
, Muscicapidae. It belongs to a group of more terrestrial species, often called chats
Chat (bird)
Chats are a group of small Old World insectivorous birds formerly classed as members of the thrush family Turdidae, but now considered Old World flycatchers....
.
Range and habitat
It is a migratoryBird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
insectivorous species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and south-west Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, but is not found naturally in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
. The distribution is more southerly than the very closely related Thrush Nightingale
Thrush Nightingale
The Thrush Nightingale, Luscinia luscinia , is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher, Muscicapidae...
Luscinia luscinia. It nests on the ground within or next to dense bushes. It winters in southern Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. At least in the Rhineland
Rhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
(Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
), the breeding habitat
Habitat (ecology)
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...
of nightingales agrees with a number of geographical
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
parameters.
- less than 400 m (1300 ft) above mean sea levelAbove mean sea levelThe term above mean sea level refers to the elevation or altitude of any object, relative to the average sea level datum. AMSL is used extensively in radio by engineers to determine the coverage area a station will be able to reach...
- mean air temperature during the growing seasonGrowing seasonIn botany, horticulture, and agriculture the growing season is the period of each year when native plants and ornamental plants grow; and when crops can be grown....
above 14 °C (57.2 °F) - more than 20 days/year on which temperatures exceed 25 °C (77 °F)
- annual precipitationPrecipitation (meteorology)In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation (also known as one of the classes of hydrometeors, which are atmospheric water phenomena is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation...
less than 750mm - aridity indexAridity indexAn aridity index is a numerical indicator of the degree of dryness of the climate at a given location. A number of aridity indices have been proposed ; these indicators serve to identify, locate or delimit regions that suffer from a deficit of available water, a condition that can severely affect...
lower than 0.35 - no closed canopyCanopy (forest)In biology, the canopy is the aboveground portion of a plant community or crop, formed by plant crowns.For forests, canopy also refers to the upper layer or habitat zone, formed by mature tree crowns and including other biological organisms .Sometimes the term canopy is used to refer to the extent...
Appearance and song
The nightingale is slightly larger than the European RobinEuropean Robin
The European Robin , most commonly known in Anglophone Europe simply as the Robin, is a small insectivorous passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family , but is now considered to be an Old World flycatcher...
, at 15–16.5 cm (5.9–6.5 in) length. It is plain brown above except for the reddish tail. It is buff to white below. Sexes are similar. The eastern subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...
L. m. hafizi and L. m. africana have paler upperparts and a stronger face-pattern, including a pale supercilium
Supercilium
The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head. Also known as an "eyebrow", it is distinct from the eyestripe, which is a line which runs...
.
Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The name has been used for well over 1,000 years, being highly recognizable even in its Anglo-Saxon form – 'nightingale'. It means 'night songstress'. Early writers assumed the female sang when it is in fact the male. The song is loud, with an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles. Its song is particularly noticeable at night because few other birds are singing. This is why its name includes "night" in several languages. Only unpaired males sing regularly at night, and nocturnal song is likely to serve attracting a mate. Singing at dawn, during the hour before sunrise, is assumed to be important in defending the bird's territory. Nightingales sing even more loudly in urban or near-urban environments, in order to overcome the background noise. The most characteristic feature of the song is a loud whistling crescendo, absent from the song of Thrush Nightingale. It has a frog-like alarm call.
Symbolism
The nightingale is an important symbol for poets from a variety of ages, and has taken on a number of symbolic connotations. HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
evokes the Nightingale in the Odyssey, suggesting the myth of Philomela and Procne (one of whom, depending on the myth's version, is turned into a nightingale ). This myth is the focus of Sophocles'
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
tragedy, Tereus
Tereus (Sophocles)
Tereus is a Greek play by the Athenian poet Sophocles. Although the play has been lost, several fragments have been recovered. Although the date that the play was first produced is not known, it is known that it was produced before 414 BCE, because the Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes...
, of which only fragments remain. Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, too, in his Metamorphoses, includes the most popular version of this myth, imitated and altered by later poets, including Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...
, Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
, and George Gascoigne
George Gascoigne
George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...
. T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
" also evokes the Nightingale's song (and the myth of Philomela and Procne). Because of the violence associated with the myth, the nightingale's song was long interpreted as a lament.
The Nightingale has also been used as a symbol of poets or their poetry. Poets chose the nightingale as a symbol because of its creative and seemingly spontaneous song. Aristophanes'
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
Birds and Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
both evoke the bird's song as a form of poetry. Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
compares a mourning Orpheus to the “lament of the nightingale”. John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
and others of the 17th century renewed the symbol. In "L'Allegro" Milton characterizes Shakespeare as a nightingale warbling “his native woodnotes wilde” (line 136), and Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...
in his "On Paradise Lost" subsequently described Milton's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
in similar terms:
-
- "Thou sing'st with so much gravity and ease,
- And above human flight dost soar aloft,
- With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft:
- The bird named from that paradise you sing
- So never flags, but always keeps on wing" (line 40)
In Sonnet 102
Sonnet 102
Sonnet 102 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It's a member of the Fair Youth sequence, in which the poet expresses his love towards a young man.-Synopsis:...
Shakespeare compares his love poetry to the song of the nightingale (Philomel):
-
- "Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
- When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
- As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
- And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:"
During the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
era the bird's symbolism changed once more: poets viewed the nightingale not only as a poet in his own right, but as “master of a superior art that could inspire the human poet”. For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. Coleridge and Wordsworth saw the nightingale more as an instance of natural poetic creation: the nightingale became a voice of nature. John Keats'
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
"Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to a Nightingale
"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 in either the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, or, as according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats House, Hampstead, London. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest...
" pictures the nightingale as an idealized poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats longs to write. Invoking a similar conception of the nightingale, Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
wrote in his “A Defense of Poetry":
-
- "A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”
Culture
- The Owl and the NightingaleThe Owl and the NightingaleThe Owl and the Nightingale is a 12th- or 13th-century Middle English poem detailing a debate between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by the poem's narrator. It is the earliest example in Middle English of a literary form known as debate poetry...
(12th or 13th century) is a Middle EnglishMiddle EnglishMiddle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
poem about an argument between these two birds. - John KeatsJohn KeatsJohn Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
's "Ode to a NightingaleOde to a Nightingale"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 in either the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, or, as according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats House, Hampstead, London. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest...
" was described by Edmund Clarence StedmanEdmund Clarence StedmanEdmund Clarence Stedman , American poet, critic, and essayist was born at Hartford, Connecticut, United States.-Biography:...
as "one of our shorter English lyrics that still seems to me... the nearest to perfection, the one I would surrender last of all" and by Algernon Charles SwinburneAlgernon Charles SwinburneAlgernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
as "one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages". - John MiltonJohn MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's sonnet "To the Nightingale" contrasts the symbolism of the nightingale as a bird for lovers, with the cuckoo as the bird that called when wives were unfaithful to (or "cuckolded") their husbands. - The love of the nightingale for the rose is widely used, often metaphorically, in Persian literaturePersian literaturePersian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...
. - The beauty of the nightingale's song is a theme in Hans Christian AndersenHans Christian AndersenHans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...
's story "The Nightingale" from 1843. - A nightingale is depicted on the reverseObverse and reverseObverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags , seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, obverse means the front face of the object and reverse...
of the Croatian 1 kunaCroatian kunaThe kuna is the currency of Croatia since 1994 . It is subdivided into 100 lipa. The kuna is issued by the Croatian National Bank and the coins are minted by the Croatian Monetary Institute....
coin, minted since 1993.
External links
- Nightingale videos, photos & sounds on the Internet Bird Collection
- Uncompressed high-quality Nightingale sound file, The Freesound Project, (requires free account to download). Retrieved December 9, 2006.
- High-quality Nightingale sound file, The Freesound Project: (requires free account to download). Retrieved December 9, 2006.
- Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (British) Nightingale Nightinghale, Retrieved June 11, 2007.
- Rose and nightingale in Persian art
- Nightingale song and behavioural ecology
- Ageing and sexing (PDF) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta