nightingale

 

common name for a migratory Old World bird of the family Turdidae (thrush family), celebrated for its vocal powers. The common nightingale of England and Western Europe, Luscinia megarhynchos, is about 6¹/₂ in. (16.3 cm) long, reddish-brown above and grayish-white below. It winters in Africa and reaches England about mid-April. Its famous song is delivered only by the male during the breeding season, at any time of day or night. A larger species is found in Eastern Europe. The bulbul, a prodigious songster of Persian literature, was once thought to be a nightingale but has been identified with another family; the Virginia nightingale is a grosbeak; and the Pekin, or Japanese, nightingale belongs to the babbler family. Nightingales are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Passeriformes, family Turdidae.

Nightingale
Conservation status
Least Concern
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Muscicapidae Genus: Luscinia Species: L. megarhynchos
Binomial name
Luscinia megarhynchos (Brehm, 1831)

The Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), also known as Rufous Nightingale 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.

It is a migratory insectivorous species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe and south-west Asia. 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) breeding habitat of nightingales is known to agree with a number of geographical parameters (Wink 1973):

• less than 200 meters above mean sea level
• mean air temperature during the growing season above 14°C
• more than 20 days/year on which temperatures exceed 25°C
• annual precipitation less than 750mm
• aridity index lower than 0.35
• no closed canopy.

The Nightingale is slightly larger than the European Robin, at 15-16.5 cm length. It is plain brown above except for the reddish tail. It is buff to white below. Sexes are similar.

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 - 'nihtingale'. It means 'night songstress'. Early writers assumed the female sang; in fact, it is the male. The male nightingale is known for his singing, to the extent that human singers are sometimes admiringly referred to as nightingales; 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 (in several languages) includes "night". 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.

The eastern subspecies L. m. hafizi and L. m. africana have paler upperparts and a stronger face-pattern, including a pale supercilium.

Culture

• The Nightingale is the national bird of Iran and Bangladesh.
• The love of the nightingale to the rose is also widely used, often metaphorically, in Turkish literature (especially in poems of Ottoman period) as well as in Persian literature.^[1]
• John Keats' poem "Ode to a Nightingale" explores the beauty of the nightingales' song.

Notes

References

• BirdLife International (2004). Luscinia megarhynchos. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern

• Wink, Michael (1973): Die Verbreitung der Nachtigall (Luscinia megarhynchos) im Rheinland. Charadrius 9(2/3): 65-80. [Article in German] PDF fulltext

External links

• Internet Bird Collection: Nightingale videos. Retrieved 2006-DEC-09.

• The Freesound Project: Uncompressed high-quality Nightingale sound file (requires free account). Retrieved 2006-DEC-09.

• The Freesound Project: High-quality Nightingale sound file (requires free account). Retrieved 2006-DEC-09.

• Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (British)- Nightingale [1]. Retrieved 2007-JUN-11.

• Rose and nightingale in Persian art [2]

• Rose and nightingale in Persian literature [3]

• Nightingale song and behavioural ecology [4]

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