a whitethroat, because I don't have a picture of a nightingaleYears ago, I was heading down to the Correze on my motorbike. I'd been riding for hours, and it was sometime around midnight. I was in a hilly, wooded area with Angouleme behind me, and enjoying the experience of travelling through somewhere I'd never been before. I stopped for a stretch. I switched the engine off, and as the engine cooled it made TINKing noises, but all was otherwise silent.
Except for a nightingale singing.
It was the first time I'd heard a nightingale in real life (though I'd heard it accompanied by cellos and by Lancaster bombers, courtesy of the BBC) , and it was beautiful.
I've heard nightingales in other parts of France since then, but not yet in England. When I first moved to Bristol I thought that Nightingale Valley, in the Avon Gorge, sounded hopeful, but an evening listening there produced nothing much more than distant revelry from Clifton. I am assured, though, by no less a person than The Finest Swordsman in France, that nightingales can be heard singing in Clifton, where he may often be found wobbling around long after the pubs have closed. When he makes this sort of pronouncement, I simply nod in agreement and forbear to mention that blackbirds too can, as the song says, sing in the dead of night; and sing beautifully; they are relatives of the nightingale, after all.
So, with the weather being so sunny and calm on Sunday, we went over to Inglestone Common, where I had heard of nightingales. Inglestone Common lies below the western flank of the Cotswolds, and is a slightly boggy, heathy, scrubby, woody sort of place, and therefore a good place for birds. We arrived quite late, to give the other birds a chance to go to bed. Indeed, with not a breath of a breeze, it could hardly have been more quiet. Bats flitted past us, so close that I could hear their wings fluttering, little leathery outboard motor sounds. We walked for some time. It was quite chilly now; the cold air was flowing down from the hills and forming a gentle breeze. The bats clocked off; I guess the insects had gone to bed too. And the nightingales, being English nightingales, had had an early night with some Horlicks, presumably.
We drove off. "That's the trouble with actively going out birdwatching," I said; "If you don't see what you set off to see, it feels like failure. Accidental birdwatching is much better."
Fortunately, the engine overheated a little while later, so we had an adventure after all. But that's another story.
And I will remember the sound of the bat's wings.
You managed to be there when most people never think of being about. The beginning and the end of the day at this time of the year are magical. No doubt you'll hear one when you least expect it, or you could try Berkely Square.
ReplyDeleteOurs haven't come back. Perhaps they don't approve of sharing the porch with the washing.
I saw a bird (blackbird I think) out on the road yesterday, it remained very still in one place for ages. A little later a couple of magpies chased it away and went off with something. I wonder if it was a dead chick.
Shame about your nightingales. We do have a Berkeley Square in Bristol too. I could get drunk and go and listen to the blackbirds there... this is very much the time when small birds are venturing out and sometimes coming to grief; it was about now that we walked through Wales, and met lots of small birds venturing forth and the evidence of small tragedies
ReplyDeleteI'll take the white-throat. In fact I saw the first this year about a week ago in the backyard on a redbud tree, with help from my binox. I wasn't drunk yet, but that came close. Not much hope for a nightingale here.
ReplyDeleteI had to do a bit of research there, Larry. I'm guessing that your whitethroat is the north american finch? (just had to do some Googling there) Do you have any particularly melodious birds locally? I was struck by how harsh, as well as strange, were the sounds of the birds I heard in Australia. It seems unfair not to have at least a few sweet songsters...
ReplyDeleteI was a little drunk when I typed that, Dru. It had been a week or more, long enough for me to forget that it was a white-crowned, not our white-throated sparrow---similar cap but pinker bill and greyer throat. Just an amateur here, but the book tells me it's Zonotrichia leucophrys, not albicollis; family Emberizidae, not the finch family Fringillidae.
ReplyDeleteI would say the melodious outnumber the harsh in number of species I hear. In my teens, before I looked at a serious bird book, I spent many hours enthralled with what Olivier Messiaen did for keyboard and orchestra with bird sounds, employing it seemed the whole spectrum. Now I don't listen to recordings much, but the bird ID audios are always a nutritious treat.