Nightingale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the bird. For other uses, see Nightingale (disambiguation).

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 low in 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.

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. Although it also sings during the day, the Nightingale is unusual in singing late in the evening; its song is particularly noticeable at that time because few other birds are singing. This is why its name (in several languages) includes "night". Recent research has shown that the birds 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.

[edit] Culture

The Nightingale is the national bird of Iran and Bangladesh.
In popular traditions, the Nightingale announces the coming of spring, and is a symbol of love.
The French traditional song
The Nightingale is also the name of a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen.
The Nightingale Which Flies inspired Tchaikovsky when composing his Humoresque opus 10-2.
John Keats, one of the great English Romantic poets of the nineteenth century, wrote the famous poem, "Ode to a Nightingale." In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world, and sees himself dead--he usues an abrupt, almost brutal word for it--as a "sod" over which the nightingale sings. The contrast between the immortal nightingale and mortal man, sitting in his garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination (102). The presence of weather is noticable in the poem, as spring came early in 1819, which brought nightingales all over the heath. According to Keats' friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a nightingale had built its nest hear his home in the spring of 1819. Keats felt a "tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum tree, where he sat for two of three hours" (Keats and His World, Viking Press, 1971).
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square is the name of a popular song and film.

[edit] 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