The Lincolnshire Bird Club

I could not turn down an opportunity of a lift down to Chamber's Wood last night to listen for nightingale. We arrived at about 2015 and wandered for a couple of hours. This was my first time here and it is a wonderful place.

We took a walk to appreciate what plants and flowers were on show and as the light dimmed the promised woodcock roved the treetops. The songs of song thrush, blackbird and blackcap sounded though the wood from our first steps but it wasn't until the end of our walk that the nightingale reached our ears.

Chilled air, a fingernail moon and deep blues graded across the sky through inky black branches gave us our nightingale ambiance. We stood and listened. It sang......and sang.

The piercing song thrush songs ceased one by one and then just nightingale, bats and mysterious sounds. We left enchanted and uplifted, we left a nightingale in it's place, in it's light.

If you want to hear Nightingales you should go to Hungary. I grant you it's further, but during the three days we were there, we were assaulted by their song. Everywhere we stopped, they were the first bird we heard. Belting out their song by day or night in almost any habitat. Even woken by them. Probably the commonest song-bird there. There were times when I wanted them to stop, so I could listen for Savi's Warbler and the like. I'm not suggesting they had reached pest status, of course, although a guide did say that about Marsh Harriers in the Hortobágy.

Rob

Thanks Rob,

I shall put that in my diary of things to do. I have wandered in Europe and witnessed how common they can be, only last year I had one in Majorca singing, in full view, only three yards away. As I stood fixated with wonder at this bird's delivery, it's whole presence shook with effort, from it's very insides to the utter tip of each and every feather. A magician's hat of joy. It's music and life-force spilled inside me and shall remain forever.

British nightingales are something else for me. I am out of their place up here in Barton. I wait each spring for a concert from an overshoot but this is very rare. When I was listening last night my mind ran riot with questions as the cool spring weather daubed rainbows around the farmland. Why that thicket, this County, this moment. My pleasure is my measure of why I walk and look at birds and moments like this chase away the demons that suggest it is a folly to spend time in this manner. I took this nightingale's presence down into the micro-life of the ancient ground beneath it's breath. It has no idea why it is there, I can only bow to the myriad threads that connect it all.