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The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the
thrush ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' is an American spy fiction television series produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC. The series follows secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a secret ...
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
chat Chat or chats may refer to: Communication * Conversation, particularly casual * Online chat, text message communication over the Internet in real-time * Synchronous conferencing, a formal term for online chat * SMS chat, a form of text messagin ...
s.


Etymology

"Nightingale" is derived from "night" and the
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''galan'', "to sing". The genus name ''Luscinia'' is Latin for "nightingale" and ''megarhynchos'' is from Ancient Greek ''megas'', "great" and ''rhunkhos'' "bill".


Subspecies

*western nightingale (''L. m. megarhynchos'') - Western Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor, wintering in tropical Africa *Caucasian nightingale (''L. m. africana'') - The Caucasus and eastern Turkey to southwestern Iran and Iraq, wintering in East Africa *eastern nightingale (''L. m. golzii'') - The Aral Sea to Mongolia, wintering in coastal East Africa


Description

The common nightingale is slightly larger than the European robin, at length. It is plain brown above except for the reddish tail. It is buff to white below. The sexes are similar. The eastern
subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...
(''L. m. golzi'') and the Caucasian subspecies (''L. m. africana'') have paler upper parts and a stronger face-pattern, including a pale
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.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...
. The song of the nightingale has been described as one of the most beautiful sounds in nature, inspiring songs,
fairy tales A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cult ...
, opera,
books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ar ...
, and a great deal of poetry.


Distribution and habitat

It is a migratory insectivorous species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe and the
Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...
, and wintering in
Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...
. It is not found naturally in the
Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...
. The distribution is more southerly than the very closely related thrush nightingale ''Luscinia luscinia''. It nests on or near the ground in dense vegetation. Research in Germany found that favoured breeding habitat of nightingales was defined by a number of geographical factors. Wink, Michael (1973):
Die Verbreitung der Nachtigall (''Luscinia megarhynchos'') im Rheinland
. ''Charadrius'' 9(2/3): 65-80. (PDF)
* less than above mean sea level * mean air temperature during the
growing season A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. The growing season is that portion of the year in which local conditions (i.e. rainfall, temperature, daylight) permit normal plant growth. Whil ...
above * more than 20 days/year on which temperatures exceed * annual precipitation less than * aridity index lower than 0.35 * no closed canopy 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. Despite local efforts to safeguard its favoured coppice and scrub habitat, numbers fell by 53 percent between 1995 and 2008. 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. By contrast, the European breeding population is estimated at between 3.2 and 7 million pairs, giving it green conservation status ( least concern).


Behaviour and ecology

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 its
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
form ''nihtegale'', 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, absent from the song of thrush nightingale. It has a frog-like alarm call. The bird is a host of the acanthocephalan intestinal parasite ''
Apororhynchus silesiacus ''Apororhynchus'' is a genus of small parasitic spiny-headed (or thorny-headed) worms. It is the only genus in the family Apororhynchidae, which in turn is the only member of the order Apororhynchida. A lack of features commonly found in the ph ...
''.


Cultural connotations

The common nightingale is an important symbol for poets from a variety of ages, and has taken on a number of symbolic connotations. Homer 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 In Greek mythology, Tereus (; Ancient Greek: Τηρεύς) was a Thracian king,Thucydides: ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' 2:29 the son of Ares and the naiad Bistonis. He was the brother of Dryas. Tereus was the husband of the Athenian prin ...
'', 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 Chrétien de Troyes (Modern ; fro, Crestien de Troies ; 1160–1191) was a French poet and trouvère known for his writing on Arthurian subjects, and for first writing of Lancelot, Percival and the Holy Grail. Chrétien's works, including ''E ...
,
Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...
, John Gower, and George Gascoigne.
T.S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National B ...
's " The Waste Land" also evokes the common 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 common 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's '' The Birds'' and Callimachus both evoke the bird's song as a form of poetry. Virgil compares the mourning of Orpheus to the “lament of the nightingale”. In
Sonnet 102 Sonnet 102 is one of the 154 sonnets written by English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is one of the Fair Youth sonnets, in which Shakespeare writes of an unnamed youth with whom the poet is enamored. Sonnet 102 is among a series o ...
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 the
Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...
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. 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." 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 (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...
' " 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": ::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 the national bird of Ukraine. One legend tells how nightingales once only lived in India, 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 every
spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a ...
to hear
Ukrainian songs Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
. National poet Taras Shevchenko observed that "even the memory of the nightingale's song makes man happy." The nightingale is the official national bird of Iran. In medieval Persian literature, the nightingale's enjoyable song has made it a symbol of the lover who is eloquent, passionate, and doomed to love in vain. In Persian poetry, the object of the nightingale's affections is the rose which embodies both the perfection of earthly beauty and the arrogance of that perfection.


Cultural depictions

* The ''Aēdōn'' ( grc, Ἀηδών, "Nightingale") is a minor character in Aristophanes's 414 BC
Attic comedy Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, an ...
'' The Birds''. * Philomela is transformed into a nightingale, according to '' Metamorphoses'' (book VI) of Ovid. * The love of the nightingale (a conventional cultural substitution for the Persian
bulbul The bulbuls are members of a family, Pycnonotidae, of medium-sized passerine songbirds, which also includes greenbuls, brownbuls, leafloves, and bristlebills. The family is distributed across most of Africa and into the Middle East, tropical As ...
) 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 classical Persian, Urdu and Turkish poetry. * " The Owl and the Nightingale" (12th or 13th century) is a Middle English poem about an argument between these two birds. * " When The Nightingale Sings" is a Middle English love poem, extolling the beauty and lost love of an unknown maiden. * "
Laüstic "Laüstic", also known as "Le Rossignol", "Le Laustic", "Laostic", and "Aüstic", is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. The title comes from the Breton word for "nightingale" (''eostig''), a symbolic figure in the poem.Marie de Franc ...
", a lai by French poet Marie de France from High Middle Ages (1100-1300) *
John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
'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. * Samuel Taylor Coleridge's " The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem", printed in 1798, disputes the traditional idea that nightingales are connected to the idea of melancholy. * Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 (1808), the "Pastoral Symphony", includes in its second movement
flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
imitations of nightingale calls. *
Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
featured the nightingale's song in the Mephisto Waltzes No. 1. *
John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...
' " Ode to a Nightingale" (1819) was described by Edmund Clarence Stedman 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 Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as ''Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition ...
as "one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages". * The beauty of the nightingale's song is a theme in
Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...
's story "
The Nightingale The common nightingale is a songbird found in Eurasia. Nightingale may also refer to: Birds * Thrush nightingale, a songbird found in Eurasia * Red-billed leiothrix, a songbird of the Indian Subcontinent Literature * "Nightingale" (short sto ...
" from 1843. * A recording of nightingale song is included, as directed by the score, in "The Pines of Janiculum", the third movement of
Ottorino Respighi Ottorino Respighi ( , , ; 9 July 187918 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. List of compositions by Ottorino Respighi, His compositions r ...
's 1924
symphonic poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...
'' Pines of Rome'' ('). *
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
based his first opera, ''
The Nightingale The common nightingale is a songbird found in Eurasia. Nightingale may also refer to: Birds * Thrush nightingale, a songbird found in Eurasia * Red-billed leiothrix, a songbird of the Indian Subcontinent Literature * "Nightingale" (short sto ...
'' (1914), on the Hans Christian Andersen story and later prepared a symphonic poem, ''
The Song of the Nightingale ''Le chant du rossignol'' (English: ''The Song of the Nightingale'') is a symphonic poem written by Igor Stravinsky in 1917. The score is adapted from his earlier work, ''Le rossignol'' (''The Nightingale''), an opera from 1914. The opera, based o ...
'' (1917), using music from the opera. * In 1915, Joseph Lamb wrote a rag called "Ragtime Nightingale" that was intended to imitate the nightingale calls. * " 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 sitcom '' Peep Show'' and in 2019, it featured as the closing song of the Amazon/BBC miniseries '' Good Omens''. **Both Terry Pratchett and
Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...
's novel '' Good 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 the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, nightingales are closely associated with the characters Lúthien Tinúviel and her mother, Melian. * A nightingale is depicted on the
reverse Reverse or reversing may refer to: Arts and media * ''Reverse'' (Eldritch album), 2001 * ''Reverse'' (2009 film), a Polish comedy-drama film * ''Reverse'' (2019 film), an Iranian crime-drama film * ''Reverse'' (Morandi album), 2005 * ''Reverse'' ...
of the Croatian 1
kuna Kuna may refer to: Places * Kuna, Idaho, a town in the United States ** Kuna Caves, a lava tube in Idaho * Kuna Peak, a mountain in California * , a village in the Orebić municipality, Croatia * , a village in the Konavle municipality, Croatia ...
coin, minted since 1993. *Nightingale was an inspiration of the creation of a Korean court solo dance
Chunaengjeon Chunaengjeon or Dance of Spring Oriole (춘앵전) is a Korean court dance (''jeongjae'') created during the later period of Joseon Dynasty.
(춘앵전). The dance initially was performed by a female dancer of the court of Joseon Dynasty, Mudong. * In Chapter 13 of Mary Shelley's '' Frankenstein'', the monster compares Safie's singing voice to that of a "nightingale in the woods". * Manfred Mann's Earth Band's sixth album, 1975's '' Nightingales & Bombers'', took its title from a World 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 "Let Nature Sing" is a single released by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on 26 April 2019, consisting of 2 minutes 32 seconds of British birdsong. The track was mixed by Adrian Thomas, Sam Lee and Bill Barclay, and released by the ...
". *An operator in the mobile video game '' Arknights'' is named after it.


In the Baha'i Faith

The nightingale is used symbolically in the
Baha'i Faith Baha (also transliterated as Bahaa, ar, بهاء) may refer to: People * Baha (name) Places *Al Bahah, a city in Saudi Arabia Trademark * Cochlear Baha, a hearing aid manufactured by Cochlear Title * Al-Muqtana Baha'uddin (979–1043), Druze ...
to represent the founder Baha'u'llah. 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. Nightingales are mentioned in much of Baha'u'llah's works, including the Tablet of Ahmad, The Seven Valleys, The
Hidden Words ''The Hidden Words'' (, ar, کلمات مكنونة, Persian: کلمات مکنونه) is a book written in Baghdad around 1858 by Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, while he walked along the banks of the Tigris river during h ...
, and the untranslated Tablet of the Nightingale and the Owl.


References


External links


Ageing and sexing
(PDF; 3.7 MB) by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze
Audio recordings
in the Xeno-canto repository
Nightingale song and behavioural ecology Nightingale videos, photos & sounds
on eBird
Rose and nightingale in Persian art
* Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (British) Nightingal
Nightingale
Retrieved June 11, 2007. {{Authority control
common nightingale The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is no ...
National symbols of Iran Birds of Central Asia Birds of Europe Birds of Africa
common nightingale The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is no ...
common nightingale The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is no ...