Singing Nightingale

The branches, bristling with bright green buds, bounce in the sweet summer air as these little birds go about their daily business, hopping from one tree to the next. The little wanderers keep the forest alive with a song that takes the silence and stirs it up into an amazing symphony, endless in its contribution to the beauty of the bare naked and still simple places of earth. The nightingale is slightly larger than the European Robin, at 15–16.5 cm (5.9–6.5 in) length. It is plain brown above except for the reddish tail, and buff to white below. Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The name has been used for well over 1,000 years, being highly recognizable even in its Anglo-Saxon form – 'nightingale', meaning 'night songstress'. Early writers assumed the female sang when it is in fact the male. The song is loud, with an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles. Its song is particularly noticeable at night because few other birds are singing. This is why its name includes "night" in several languages. Only unpaired males sing regularly at night, and nocturnal song is likely to serve attracting a mate. Singing at dawn, during the hour before sunrise, is assumed to be important in defending the bird's territory. Nightingales 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. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/people/juskiddink/sounds/127536/