The New Student's Reference Work/Nightingale



Night′ingale, a bird famous on account of its brilliant song, which for quality and variety is not exceeded by that of any other bird. The song of the nightingale has been a theme of poets for ages. Homer wrote of the “sweet, tawny nightingale” that “deep in leafy shades complains, trilling her thick-warbled strains.” Milton called the nightingale “most musical, most melancholy bird.”  Coleridge wrote:

 “ . . . . . the merry nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates, With fast, thick warble his delicious notes, As if he were fearful an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chaunt, and disburden his full soul Of all its music.”

This bird belongs to the group of Old World warblers, and is not found in the New World. Its range is central and western Europe; it is abundant in Spain and Portugal, and abounds in portions of the midland, eastern and southern counties of England. Thicket and hedge and wet meadow are its favorite haunt. It is during the nesting season the male pours forth his glorious song, to be heard from the middle of April to perhaps a little later than the middle of June. Both day and night he sings. Apart from the wonderful song, the utterance of the nightingale is not musical; Mitchell, in Cries and Call-Notes of Wild Birds, declares the common alarm cry very like the croak of a frog, and speaks of its call as a “squeak” and of a high “distress-note.” The bird is about the size of the hedge sparrow; graceful of form; in color, reddish-brown above and grayish-white below. Its loosely constructed nest is usually built on the ground, sometimes in low brush. In rare beauty of song, our hermit thrush has been compared to the nightingale. Our cardinal bird (cardinal grosbeak) is sometimes called the Virginia nightingale.