Dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo: Quio tr rrrrrrr itz.

Lu lu lu lu ly ly ly ly li li li li.

Quio didl li lulyli.

And did you recognize right away what this is all about?

According to the naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein, this is what "The Song of the Nightingale" sounds like.

A daring transcription, one might say.

Bird lovers have tried again and again to translate the nightingale's sounds into a suitable sequence of letters, but there was always something half-baked about the efforts.

Kai Spanke

Editor in the Feuilleton.

  • Follow I follow

The biologist Silke Kipper has now published a book about the species from the flycatcher family, which is prominent in legends and literature.

If you want to find out about their migration behavior, ability to learn, cultural status and singing talent in the most entertaining and sometimes very funny way, you will not find a better source.

For twenty years, Kipper has been researching this songbird, which, one should not conceal, is in some respects average: the nightingale is more intensively colored than the willow eater, but by far not as magnificent as the bullfinch.

It reaches the breeding range after the black redstart but earlier than the common swift.

It is rarer than the blackbird, but ubiquitous compared to the Rock Bunting.

The number of "illegitimate" offspring per nest is also in the middle range.

Thirty years ago, scientists with clear moral ideas still assumed that the nightingale was a "monogamous seasonal marriage", but according to Kipper the situation is actually different: "A study of the relationships of 65 potential fathers and over a hundred chicks showed that about one in five chicks was not had been conceived by his social father, i.e. the feeder at the nest.”

The fact that the inconspicuous bird is so popular is of course thanks to its singing, which can reach the volume of a wood milling machine at up to ninety decibels and consists of around one hundred and eighty verse types.

Each stanza is made up of four parts.

It starts with soft smacking noises.

Stronger elements are then presented in contrasting tones, leading to the heart, in which the nightingale fires jagged, powerful beats.

Finally, she treats the listeners to a single high-frequency component.

Incidentally, the bird performs its stanzas “every time in the same way”.

In other words, he has an enormous range, but he delivers it stereotypically.

Kipper recorded countless nightingales in Berlin and analyzed their digitally generated sound images.

One finding, for example, is that more order in the song sequence correlates with greater participation in caring for the boys.

Johann Matthäus Bechstein could only dream of such insights when writing his Dada transcription.

Silke Kipper: "The Nightingale".

A legendary bird and its song.

Insel Verlag, Berlin 2022. 176 pages, illustrations, hardcover, €20.