Nightingales that live in different places and sing in different ways. Young learn from the experience of senior and complicate their songs. If an eminent singer appears somewhere, the other nightingales borrow from him the best trills. Nightingale songs consist of complex musical phrases that are called "musical tribes." Such knees can be up to forty. The common nightingale is the most talented in its nightingale family. The southern Nightingale lives in the North Caucasus. The color of its plumage has a reddish tint.
What a regular nightingale looks like.
Despite the wonderful singing, nightingale modest gray bird the size of a little sparrow. In nature, he usually sings in the thick of the branches and it is hard to see. As a child, fascinated by his singing, I tried for a long time to see the nightingale, sneak up to the sound, set up an ambush in the bushes of thorns. And after long efforts I was lucky to see him, only a beautiful bird as in cartoons pulling a graceful head on an elongated neck and singing to the left and right I didn’t see, a little gray bird was hiding in the bushes, it was unknown how, without any facial expression, graceful trills. The disappointment, of course, for a five year old kid was strong.
Is it true that there are nightingales with bright plumage?
It turns out that not only in the tale of Andersen there are beautiful nightingales, but also in nature nightingales with colorful plumage. Such an elegant and perky nightingale lives in our region. This varakushka is a bird with a bright blue feathering of the neck and breast, a little smaller than the usual nightingale. Varakushka occurs near the water, and builds nests in secluded places, right on the ground. When the boy sings, he fervently raises his tail. This nightingale sings almost round the clock and often imitates the voices of other birds and animals.
The nightingale is a passerine detachment, which has only 2 species: the nightingale and the southern nightingale. Everyone is known for their beautiful singing, thanks to which they are often kept in captivity.
Nightingale little bird. Its size is slightly larger than the size of a sparrow. The color of the bird is unremarkable: brownish brown, brownish gray. Pretty long and rounded tail.
The common nightingale lives in central Russia, in the south of Siberia. Absolutely boring and uninteresting bird, at first glance. They love her not for her appearance, but for her voice.
But what could surprise a gray, nondescript bird with a beautiful voice? As it turned out, an ordinary nightingale keeps a lot of secrets and mysteries.
True to your home
Nightingales all their life (and this is about 10 years) live in the same place. After wintering in hot Africa, they return to their nests. And the young stock settles near the nest in which they were born. The thing is that they are extremely picky in choosing habitats. After a long choice of housing, they do not “want” to return to an empty, uninhabited place.
Gray parrot
It would seem that the nightingale and the parrot do not connect anything. Completely different families and squads. But the nightingale is different from all birds not only by the intricacy and beauty of the trill, but also by the ability to imitate the voices of other birds. It can be safely called a blackbird family parrot.
Singing lessons
Since childhood, parents teach their chicks truly beautiful singing. But even more surprising is the fact that the young people for the rest of their lives are trying to imitate the older generation, considering them more experienced and skilled craftsmen.
The house is locked
When the nightingale arrives from wintering, he waits up to 5 days and starts singing all day long, taking a short break. So lasts up to two weeks. This is necessary in order to attract the female to her dwelling. After the feathered bird begins to sing only at night, in order to drive away other males from the dwelling. It is also worth noting that he ruthlessly expels all other birds from his territory.
Singer's professionalism
Any experienced vocalist can envy the change in tones of a nightingale song. The repertoire of the nightingale is equal to 180-300 kinds of tones. The song of the nightingale may contain up to 24 knees. A knee is an alternating series of sounds. But this is not so much in comparison with the number of knees of a more adult nightingale (40 tribes). The thing is that females for mating choose the most experienced singer. Therefore, the older the bird, the more likely to get offspring.
Big appetites
The common nightingale feeds mainly on insects (bedbugs, leaf beetles, weevils and click beetles). In the cold season, when all insects hide under the ground, the nightingale does not squeamish with berries and seeds.
It would seem that there is nothing unusual and surprising in this. But if an ant has tremendous power and is able to lift a weight 10 times more than himself, then a nightingale can eat almost 90% of its body weight. It is vital for him to compensate for all the energy that he spends during singing.
Long flights
For the winter, nightingales fly to hot Africa. Their flight begins in central Russia, and ends in the Congo. it 6500 km on my way. How much time and how much effort it takes for these small and fragile birds to overcome this path, one can only guess.
Faster than wind
Nightingale fairly fast birds. On average, their speed can reach up to 50 km / h. Of course, this is not comparable with the speed of an equine swift (111 km / h), but for an ordinary little bird, the speed of the nightingale delights.
Also, since ancient times people have admired the nightingale, and there are a lot of interesting and extremely curious facts about how people interacted with these amazing birds.
Of course, the fact that they are still caged to this day in order to enjoy the wonderful nightingale singing every minute will not surprise anyone. But there is something that few people know:
- In the ancient East, the nightingale singing was especially appreciated. Nightingales lived in cages in palaces and castles, especially emperors and nobles. It was believed that the nightingale his trill calls for luck and welfare to their owners. But ordinary people could not afford to have a nightingale.
- Joseph Helffrich (American astronomer) in 1911 discovered an asteroid in the main belt group. He called this asteroid “Lucini”, which means “nightingale” in Latin.
- In Kursk (Russia, Kursk region) a whole museum was dedicated to the nightingale, which is called “the Kursk nightingale”.
- In the 19th century, fishing for nightingales was considered very profitable. When the rows of birds began to thin, I had to accept a decree banning nightingale fishing. Especially, in the Kursk, Ryazan and Kiev provinces, where nightingales were especially valued.
- In some cuisines of the world nightingales were used as a dish. Of course, basically, the love of the nightingale was devoid of gastronomic overtones. But, for example, in Germany they served pate made from nightingale tongues. And in some European countries they loved only the meat of the nightingale.
- Of course, traditional medicine could not pass by such an amazing bird. It was believed that nightingale meat can cure ailments. Whether it is anemia (anemia), chronic fatigue (constant desire to sleep), abdominal pain and much more. Nightingale and magical subtext were also given to the meat. It was believed that having tried it, a person would be able to understand the language of animals and birds, cause rain and see the future. Many took the meat of the nightingale in order to discover in themselves a unique talent for singing, music, drawing, or needlework.
Here is such an amazing nightingale. It would seem that a little bird, and how many secrets and mysteries keeps in itself.
The nightingale bird is known for all its abilities to produce wonderful trills. What else do we know about the nightingale?
Each of us at least once heard such a riddle:
Who is without notes and without flute
The best are the trills,
Hollow, more tender?
Who is this? ... The otkadka begs itself - yes it is!
Almost all the people sometime at night have heard the beautiful singing of this bird. But those who saw nightingale up close, much less. However, there is nothing remarkable in the appearance of the nightingale, it is very similar to the sparrow. Only here the voice is charming and unusual.
If you still see a nightingale, then you will see an ugly little gray bird. The nightingale has big black eyes.
The nightingale is a songbird.
The color of this bird is stable, it does not depend on the age of the bird, nor on the season, the nightingale also does not change at all during the mating season. Males and females are almost identical in plumage color. An adult individual in length can reach fifteen - twenty centimeters, its wingspan reaches thirty centimeters. Nightingale weighs about thirty grams. There are several species of these birds, but now consider the common nightingale.
These birds can be found almost throughout the territory of Russia, it lives in temperate latitudes of the western part of the country, and up to the cold Siberia. It prefers to live in dense thickets of bushes, on field marshes, they have chosen and are overgrown in river valleys. However, the nightingale can live in a park within the city, but the place should be as best as possible hidden from the human eye. That is why the songbird is so difficult to see and see at close range.
Some people are lucky, when meeting with them, these birds do not fly away, but sit on a branch and study a passerby. Sometimes they even admit to themselves at a fairly close distance - about a meter. The most lucky can take pictures of them, and more than once. Apparently, among the nightingales there are relatively fearless people who are not frightened either by people or their movements, nor by the sounds of the shutter and the flash of the camera. Moreover, the nightingale can even "pose" - fly over to the next branch, turn around, turn the head higher. Then the bird quietly flies away about his business.
Caterpillars, larvae, beetles, worms form the basis of the diet of the nightingale. He can easily and abundantly find all this in the thick grass or last year’s leaves. At the end of the summer, the diet of the nightingale changes, various berries begin to dominate, and the most beloved for him is elderberry.
These birds usually nest on the ground or very close to it. The bird begins to develop the nest immediately after returning from wintering grounds. Nesting and mating season occur at the time when the leaves of birch trees are blooming, and the leaf should be dissolved so that the birds can drink dew from it. In the mating season, nightingales sing the most, so they lure females. Hear the nightingale trill is usually possible from dusk to dawn, during the day these birds rarely delight songs. The most active birds are flooded from the beginning of the mating season until the incubation of the offspring.
The voice of the nightingale is sonorous and pleasant to the human ear. When the mating season ends and mating has already occurred, the female lays eggs. The laying usually consists of five eggs having a gray-green color. The female incubates the eggs, the incubation period is two weeks. At the end of June, nightingale chicks are born. Over the summer, these birds only have offspring once. At the end of August, two or three families are united in a flock, and thus the birds fly away to winter to the south. For this, they have chosen the southeast of the African continent. The flight is carried out mainly at night. These birds travel great distances.
Nightingale is a migratory bird. The following year, the nightingales return to the nesting site. Ornithologists have noticed that old individuals very often settle in the same places as before. Scientists have determined that this can happen again up to nine times in a row.