27 thoughts on “Luscinia megarhynchos sez: Wake up!”

  1. I think he’s saying “Get anywhere near my spot and I’ll peck out your eyes!”

    (Remembering a great old Gary Larson cartoon.)

      1. Kings Cross!

        Nightingale’s do not sing for many weeks in a year… May and early June – & will be migrating from now to September.

    2. First day in a month of cool enough to wake up or sleep for that matter, in New Mexico.

    1. That gives me an excellent idea – download the video, convert the soundtrack to mp3 and put it on my phone for alarm clock purposes. Thanks Rik!

      1. That IS a good idea! If I knew how to download and convert to mp3 I’d add it to my iPod, which I use for my alarm. Can you explain how to do that? You’ll have to type slowly and use small words, though, since I’m the kind of guy who has to go to night school to learn how to use a hammer.

        1. I’ll give it a try!

          1. Google a thing called “Ultimate YouTube Downloader” and install into Chrome (or whatever browser you like I guess) as per the instructions. Quit and restart Chrome.

          2. View the video in YouTube (as opposed to WEIT). There should now be a button next to the “Like” thumbs called “Download”.

          3. Select “MP3 convert” on the drop-down menu. It’ll now download the soundtrack to your computer.

          4. Import the new file to your iTunes library (it’s called Common Nightingale.mp3)

          5. Sync your iPod.

          6. I hope now you can just select the mp3 as the alarm sound within the iPod menus.

          I’m doing it slightly differently so let me know if step 4 onwards doesn’t work and I’ll rethink it.

          1. Thanks! Looks easy–I’m gonna try it once I finish reading all the darn terms they ask you to agree to before installing Chrome. Those things are a real cure for insomnia!!!

          2. Rik

            I only use Chrome because it means I don’t have to install Flash separately (on a Mac). You can probably get the YT downloader for Firefox/others…

      2. I had the exact same idea, only downloading the vid isn’t necessary.

        Here is the MP3 for anyone interested.
        https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iu2goojtjw7hgo/Luscinia.mp3

        I will leave it open until this time tomorrow. I’ve edited it slightly to remove some of the larger silences only. It’s 39 seconds and 1.3Mb.
        I must say that seeing the modulation and timings of the song in graphic form is incredible. The the patterns and precision are immediately recognizable.

        1. I’m going to edit the first harsh “trill” off in Pro Tools cos I think it’d give me a heart attack first thing in the morning. Then fade the rest in fairly slowly.

          Also I suspect it’ll sound quite interesting if you slow it down a lot…

          1. True! I once worked with a guy who had made the most marvelous recording of one of his local nightingales. We worked at the Danish Radio at the time, and he used the recording in real time, in half-time and even slower. The result is amazing! What we hear as a single TJUK is in fact several octave-jumps and trills. It sings much more than we can hear.

  4. It’d be a nice change to wake up to one of these guys, as opposed to the usual run of curve-billed thrashers and northern mockingbirds hereabouts.

    1. Mockingbirds are way cool. Try whistling a made-up bird song and see if they reply. I had one hanging around in California that imitated my screen door slamming shut. I wonder what the adaptive advantage (if any) of song mimicry is. Sexual selection?

      1. Perhaps it confuses birds of the copied species & drives them off from potential food resources?

      2. Sexual selection?

        Yes. Females prefer males with the largest repertoire of songs.

        That nightingale sounded a whole lot like a mockingbird to me.

  5. In swedish nightingales are “näktergal”, sing. “näktergalen”.

    The last part is also “lunatic” from “galning”, so of course I refer to them as “näktergalning” (“nightin-lunatic”).

    1. I like that!

      Old English galan = Old High German galan =
      Old Norse gala

      -gale (singer)

      So “night singer”…

  10. Nightingales are great skulkers. I hear them several times a year, but actually see one only about once every two years at best. It probably took a lot of time to get this film.

  11. The Western Meadowlark has the prettiest song of the birds around here, but it can’t stand up to this guy.

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