Quarantine entry #55 - May 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but it look as if my home province of Ontario will be opening next week, so things are certainly moving now, yay! Yes, real life is unpredictable, as well as somewhat brutal, as the entire conclusion of the lockdown/self-isolation/etc. comes down to your money or your life, aka the left vs. the right. Sad, this is! Anything else?

Well, I want to talk about the common nightingale bird instead. It’s impossible to imagine an overgrown garden, moist shadowy shrubbery, aspen and oaken forests without its’ songs. (We are talking Eurasia here, not North America, where no true wild nightingales exist, period). The wondrous songs of the nightingale, in all of their varied glory, are carried everywhere in such places. (BTW, among the songbirds, nightingales are part of the flycatcher family, which are not usually known for their singing skills). Every sound seems to be produced by the singer with the greatest of tension of its’ body, throat, breast, beak. Even the wings and the tail shake in the song’s rhythm. By mid-May, when the females of this species – the common nightingale – arrive, the males sing non-stop, except for two hours after sunset, when they rest.

At night, a male nightingale goes to its’ favorite perch, usually in the low-lying shrubbery. After sunrise, it flies to a treetop, and continues its’ song there. Thus, nightingale couples are made, male rivalries are settled, and songs, all different, accompany it all.

After the eggs are laid, of course, the nightingale males stop singing at nights, do not sing during the day for so long, but they still serenade at sunrises and sunsets. (As the rest of songbirds do, actually). When the chicks hatch, however, the nightingales are largely done – some lines during sunrise and sunset, some sounds during the day, not a peep during nights. Only bachelor and widower males continue to sing – but they can continue to do so until the end of June.

Both the nightingales themselves are colored drably and their nests are hardly noticeable. The latter are located on the ground, in shadowy places, among sparse grass. Old, last year leaves are involved in the nest’s construction – they are of the local variety, the ones that are lying around. Female nightingales are the ones that built nests, and the latter are built at a distance of 50-70 m away from the males’ singing position, lest uninvited guests arrive and find the nests.

The chicks of the common nightingale hatch in about two weeks and immediately they are fed. Common nightingales eat caterpillars, forest bugs, soft-bodied beetles, pill bugs, various gnats and spiders – the chicks and the adult birds eat them all. At 12 days of age, the chicks of the common nightingale leave their nest, but remain with their parents for another three weeks. These birds travelling through forest clearings, riverside copses and shrubs, field ravines through July and August. In mid-August, they begin to migrate south, and by September, they are gone for good. The common nightingale winters in southeast Africa. Anything else?

…The common nightingale actually has several cousins, at least in the Russian ornithology classification. There is the Siberian blue robin, whose males are bright blue – it appears in Europe only rarely. There is the Siberian rubythroat, which, despite its’ name, is a part of the nightingale/flycatcher group, and not the kinglet one, (kinglets do not have anything to do with nightingales or flycatchers). The males of this species do have a bright red patch on their chins and inner throats. Finally, there’s the rufous-tailed robin, also known as the whistling nightingale, which differs from the common nightingale with its’ song.

…If you think that the word ‘robin’ has come up too much lately, you’re right – the Eurasian robin doesn’t look much like the American robin, and the two birds aren’t very closely related, as the American robin is actually a bird of the thrust family. Flycatchers, (including nightingales), and thrushes are two different bird groups, so there is that.

…This is also ‘it’ for now. See you all soon!