Thecommon nightingale,rufous nightingale or simplynightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), is a smallpasserinebird which is best known for its powerful and beautifulsong. It was formerly classed as a member of thethrush familyTurdidae, but is now more generally considered to be anOld World flycatcher,Muscicapidae.[2] It belongs to a group of more terrestrial species, often calledchats.
"Nightingale" is derived from "night" and theOld Englishgalan, "to sing".[3][4] The genus nameLuscinia isLatin for "nightingale" andmegarhynchos is fromAncient Greekmegas, "great" andrhunkhos "bill".[5]
The common nightingale is slightly larger than theEuropean robin, 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. The sexes are similar. The easternsubspecies (L. m. golzi) and the Caucasian subspecies (L. m. africana) have paler upper parts and a stronger face-pattern, including a palesupercilium. The song of the male nightingale[6] has been described as one of the most beautiful sounds in nature, inspiringsongs,fairy tales,opera,books, and a great deal of poetry.[7] However, historically most people were not aware that female nightingales do not sing.
It is amigratory insectivorous species breeding in forest and scrub inEurope and thePalearctic, and wintering inSub-Saharan Africa. It is not found naturally in theAmericas. The distribution is more southerly than the very closely relatedthrush nightingaleLuscinia luscinia. It nests on or near the ground in dense vegetation. Research inGermany found that favoured breedinghabitat of nightingales was defined by a number ofgeographical factors.[8]
In the U.K., the bird is at the northern limit of its range which has contracted in recent years, placing it on the red list for conservation.[9] Despite local efforts to safeguard its favoured coppice and scrub habitat, numbers fell by 53 percent between 1995 and 2008.[10] A survey conducted by the British Trust for Ornithology in 2012 and 2013 recorded some 3,300 territories, with most of these clustered in a few counties in the southeast of England, notably Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and East and West Sussex.[11]
By contrast, the European breeding population is estimated at between 3.2 and 7 million pairs, giving it green conservation status (least concern).[12]
Common nightingales are so named because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The name has been used for more than 1,000 years, being highly recognisable even in itsOld English formnihtegale, which 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 probably serves to attract 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 that is absent from the song of its close relative, thethrush nightingale (Luscinia luscinia). It has a frog-like alarm call.
The common nightingale is an important symbol for poets from a variety of ages, and has taken on a number of symbolic connotations.Homer evokesAëdon the nightingale inOdyssey, suggesting the myth ofPhilomela andProcne (one of whom, depending on the myth's version, is turned into a nightingale[14]).[15] This myth is the focus ofSophocles's tragedy,Tereus, of which only fragments remain.Ovid, too, in hisMetamorphoses, includes the most popular version of this myth, imitated and altered by later poets, includingChrétien de Troyes,Geoffrey Chaucer,John Gower, andGeorge Gascoigne.T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" also evokes the common nightingale's song (and the myth of Philomela and Procne).[16] Because of the violence associated with the myth, the nightingale's song was long interpreted as a lament.
The common nightingale has also been used as a symbol of poets or their poetry.[17] Poets chose the nightingale as a symbol because of its creative and seemingly spontaneous song.Aristophanes'sThe Birds andCallimachus both evoke the bird's song as a form of poetry.Virgil compares the mourning of Orpheus to the "lament of the nightingale".[18]
InSonnet 102 Shakespeare compares his love poetry to the song of the common 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 theRomantic 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".[18] For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. The nightingale has a long history with symbolic associations ranging from "creativity, the muse, nature's purity, and, in Western spiritual tradition, virtue and goodness."[19] 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 Defence of Poetry":[20]
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.
The nightingale is thenational bird ofUkraine. One legend tells how nightingales once only lived inIndia, when one nightingale visited Ukraine. Hearing sad songs from the people, the nightingale sang its song to cheer them up. The people responded with happy songs, and since then, nightingales have visited Ukraine everyspring to hearUkrainian songs.[21] National poetTaras Shevchenko observed that "even the memory of the nightingale's song makes man happy."[22][23]
The nightingale is the officialnational bird ofIran. In medievalPersian literature, the nightingale's enjoyable song made it a symbol of the lover who is eloquent, passionate, and doomed to love in vain.[24] In Persian poetry, the object of the nightingale's affections is therose, which embodies both the perfection of earthly beauty and the arrogance of that perfection.
The love of the nightingale (a conventional cultural substitution for the Persianbulbul) for the rose is widely used as a metaphor for the poet's love for the beloved and the worshiper's love for God in classicalPersian,Urdu andTurkish poetry.[25]
John Milton's sonnet "To the Nightingale" (1632–33) 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.
A recording of nightingale song is included, as directed by the score, in "The Pines of Janiculum", the third movement ofOttorino Respighi's 1924symphonic poemPines of Rome (Pini di Roma).
In 1915,Joseph Lamb wrote a rag called "Ragtime Nightingale" that was intended to imitate the nightingale calls.[29]
"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" (1939) was one of the most popular songs in Britain during World War II. In 2004, the song was featured in an episode of series 2 of the Channel 4 sitcomPeep Show and in 2019, it featured as the closing song of the Amazon/BBC miniseriesGood Omens.
BothTerry Pratchett andNeil Gaiman's novelGood Omens and the aforementioned miniseries adaptation joke that "while they were eating, for the first time ever, a nightingale (sang/actually did sing) in Berkeley Square. Nobody heard it over the noise of the traffic, but it was there, right enough."
In Chapter 13 ofMary Shelley'sFrankenstein, the monster compares Safie's singing voice to that of a "nightingale in the woods".
Manfred Mann's Earth Band's sixth album, 1975'sNightingales & Bombers, took its title from aWorld War II naturalist's recording of a nightingale singing in a garden as warplanes flew overhead. The recording is featured in a song on the album.
The song of the nightingale is one of the main elements in the 2019 single "Let Nature Sing".
An operator in the mobile video gameArknights is named after it.[32]
The nightingale is used symbolically in theBaha'i Faith to represent the founderBaha'u'llah.[33] Baha'is utilise this metaphor to convey how Baha'u'llah's writings are of beautiful quality, much like how the nightingale's singing is revered for its beautiful quality in Persian music and literature.[34]
Nightingales are mentioned in much of Baha'u'llah's works, including theTablet of Ahmad,The Seven Valleys, TheHidden Words, and the untranslated Tablet of the Nightingale and the Owl.
^Dimitrova, Z. M.; Murai, Éva; Georgiev, Boyko B. (1995). "The first record in Hungary ofApororhynchus silesiacus Okulewicz and Maruszewski, 1980 (Acanthocephala), with new data on its morphology".Parasitologia Hungarica.28:83–88.S2CID82191853.
^Chandler, Albert R. (1934), "The Nightingale in Greek and Latin Poetry",The Classical Journal,XXX (2), The Classical Association of the Middle West and South:78–84,JSTOR3289944
^Eliot, T. S. (1964),The Waste Land and Other Poems (Signet Classic ed.), New York, NY: Penguin Group, pp. 32–59,ISBN978-0-451-52684-7{{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Shippey, Thomas (1970), "Listening to the Nightingale",Comparative Literature,XXII (1), Duke University Press:46–60,doi:10.2307/1769299,JSTOR1769299
^abDoggett, Frank (1974), "Romanticism's Singing Bird",SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900,XIV (4), Rice University:547–561,doi:10.2307/449753,JSTOR449753
^A'lam, Hushang (2012)."BOLBOL "nightingale"". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.).Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. IV. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 336–338. Retrieved2 July 2021.
^Diba, Layla S. (2001)."Gol o bolbol". InYarshater, Ehsan (ed.).Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. 11. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 52–57. Retrieved15 November 2013.
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