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b u l l e t i n the University of Sussex newsletter
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Sweet nightingale
"To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ectasy!"
WHAT a way to go. Like Keats, many of us long to hear the nightingale but the annual wait is becoming increasingly anxious because this "light-winged Dryad of the trees" has been declining in Britain for at least 50 years. 1998 is the year of the British Trust for Ornithology's Nightingale Appeal launched, this April, in London's Berkeley Square, by Dame Vera Lynn. Sadly, the nightingale in the song was probably a robin, although nightingales did nest in Regent's Park until about a century ago. Beware, says Dr David Harper of BIOLS: other birds, especially robins, may sing at night and nightingales often sing by day.
Sussex, says David, is still one of the nightingale's strongholds in Britain and it is possible to experience the unforgettable sound of several males singing at once. Males return from wintering grounds in West Africa a few days ahead of females, launching into song by day and night. This spring, they arrived early and Dr Martyn Stenning (BIOLS) and his CCE evening class heard and saw one near Ditchling on the unusually early date of 29 March. In mid-April, an unprecedented trio of males sang together on and around campus and, before moving on, overshadowed the almost equally beautiful songs of our nesting blackcaps, blackbirds and song thrushes.
Nightingales, says David Harper, seem most at home in damp scrub. To hear Keats' "darkling", he says, visit the commons near Burgess Hill or Henfield, or try large areas of tall, dense, scrub on the downs. The best time for hearing them changes as the season progresses. In 1996 and 1997, Robert Thomas (BIOLS) found that unpaired males sang most at night but, once paired, switched to singing most at dawn and dusk. The famous nocturnal song, which contains more whistling "peeeo" notes, seems to be especially important for attracting females which arrive during the hours of darkness.
Already the males are singing less by night, and at least some females are incubating clutches of four or five olive eggs. The speckled youngsters of the only brood of the year start leaving the nest in mid-May. By then song will have become sporadic, finally dying out completely towards the end of term. After this we will have to wait until another year.
"Was it a vision, or a waking dream ?"
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