Common Nightingale

Celebrated as one of Europe's finest songsters, the Common Nightingale delivers an extraordinarily rich, loud, flute-like melody of bubbling trills, slow whistles, and a rising crescendo, sung by day and by night. Its appearance is plain by contrast: warm brown upperparts, a rufous-chestnut tail, and pale greyish-white underparts. It skulks in dense thickets, scrub, and undergrowth within deciduous woodland, favouring thick ground cover near water, where it forages for insects and larvae, adding berries in autumn. Nesting low in cover, it lays four to five eggs, incubated for 13 to 14 days, with young fledging at 10 to 12 days. A long-distance migrant, it breeds in Europe and western Asia and crosses the Sahara to winter in sub-Saharan Africa. The species is classified as Least Concern.