The Best Singer of the Woods and Fields
by Jenny Rainbow
Title
The Best Singer of the Woods and Fields
Artist
Jenny Rainbow
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
I was walking through the forest (in Russia) and suddenly heard a bird's song, the most beautiful and sweet bird voice of the Nightingale. I tried to find him, but it was quiet difficult, as this bird is so small and doesnt have a bright colorful plumage and its very careful and timid. But lucky me, I found him finally (by the sound of course as its so-ooo hard to notice him among the branches and foliage) and i had with me my lens 70-200, so I've GOT him! :-))
Common 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'. It means '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 to attract 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.
The Common Nightingale is an important symbol for poets from a variety of ages, and has taken on a number of symbolic connotations. Homer evokes the Nightingale in the Odyssey, suggesting the myth of Philomela and Procne (one of whom, depending on the myth's version, is turned into a nightingale.
The Common Nightingale has also been used as a symbol of poets or their poetry. Poets chose the nightingale as a symbol because of its creative and seemingly spontaneous song.
During the Romantic era the bird's symbolism changed once more: poets viewed the nightingale not only as a poet in his own right, but as �master of a superior art that could inspire the human poet�. For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. Coleridge and Wordsworth saw the nightingale more as an instance of natural poetic creation: the nightingale became a voice of nature. John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" pictures the nightingale as an idealized poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats longs to write. Invoking a similar conception of the nightingale, Shelley wrote in his �A Defense of Poetry":
"A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Nightingale
Listen to the song of Nightingale: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTkZRO-FYTM
Uploaded
September 6th, 2012
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