Richard Collins: One bird is truly on song only in dark of night

The alarm clocks sounded early yesterday morning and drowsy enthusiasts headed out for the annual dawn chorus celebration. The avian recitals were late this year, but the music was as powerful as ever.

For purity of form and phrasing, the song thrush was our outstanding singer. Elsewhere in Europe, the top prize would go to the nightingale, but whether the world’s finest avian vocalist is a genuine dawn chorus participant is debatable. Nightingales don’t wait until morning to perform; they sing throughout the night.

Communication is crucially important in the natural world. It’s no use being a well-endowed specimen, with a good territory, if you don’t make prospective mates, and potential rivals, aware of the fact.

Mammals rely on smell to broadcast vital information. Birds invest in fancy plumages or conspicuous songs for advertising and publicity.

A few species are both glamorous and musically accomplished, but the nightingale, a little brown bird slightly larger than a robin, isn’t much to look at. Staying under cover, it sings to get its message out.

The song is extraordinarily powerful and a nightingale will sing even more loudly in a noisy environment; the ‘cocktail party effect’ kicks in. So much energy is expended singing through the night, that the bird loses weight and must feed up during the day to get back into condition.

Nor is the repertoire confined to a single song. One version is used when advertising for a mate and a different song deployed once the partner has been secured. Recitals are composed of phrases. It’s said that a nightingale can sing continuously for two hours without repetition.

A well-known song was composed in the French fishing village of Le Lavendou in 1938. The clientele of the pub where ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ was premiered were not too impressed, but Vera Lynn raised troop morale with it during World War II.

Afterwards, villagers decided to erect a wall-plaque commemorating ‘Le rossignol’, but there was a problem; nobody could remember from which pub the song had originated.

That a nightingale would sing in swanky Mayfair is just about possible; the bird used to nest in wooded areas on the outskirts of London.

An article, in the May, 2010 edition of ‘The Pharmaceutical Journal’, describes a pair taking up residence ‘in a tangle of brambles, close to a picnic table and just yards from the park’s main footpath, which forms part of the Capital Ring walking route encircling inner London’.

The local birdwatchers kept the location secret, lest hoards of ornithological well-wishers converged on it. Despite the incessant traffic noise, the nest was successful in 2007 and the pair raised another family the following year.

This visitor from sub-Saharan Africa occasionally loses its way on migration and ends up in Ireland. One sang for several nights at Carton, Co. Kildare, in May, 1955, raising hopes that it might stay and breed. It was not to be; the prospect of nesting in our wet, windy island did not appeal to the visitor.

The effects of climate change should make Ireland more attractive to birds from slightly warmer climates. Little egrets have set up shop here, while glossy ibises and hoopoes may be house-hunting. There seems little prospect, however, that nightingales will follow suit.

Their numbers have fallen by 90% in England over the last forty years and surveys show that the decline is continuing.

Similar losses have been reported from other parts of Western Europe, but the populations to the east of the continent seem to be stable.