Corona Wildlife Diary: Day Ninety-four

LewesWildlife
, 19 June 2020
Corona Wildlife Diary: Day Ninety-four
Nightingale / Photo by Derek Middleton.

Corona Wildife Diary: Day Ninety-four

My bottom desk drawer is a graveyard, the final resting place for the obsolete. A compass, some Tippex, a model of a Dodo, two Whoopee Cushions, foreign coins, a golf ball, a giant novelty pencil from Malta, a Clanger, some buttons and a little book all about Sporty Spice. I was trying to tidy it up yesterday - it was one of the job's I had on my 'Pandemic To Do List'.

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Amongst this rubble I found a Maxell C90 cassette. 

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I have no idea where it came from. An accompanying note says the tape contains “the song of a Nightingale in the churchyard of St John sub Castro, Lewes, spring 1985”. There's a note inside that says it was recorded by a lady called Barbara from an upstairs window in neighbouring Lancaster Street. So I stopped tidying the drawer, went up into the loft and found my clunky cassette deck. After some dusting, re-wiring, buzzing and hissing I put the cassette in the tape deck and pressed 'play'.

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The sweet sound captured on the cassette swirled from my speakers and transported me back 35 years to a time when Reagan negotiated with Thatcher, Paul Hardcastle’s na-na-na-na-Nineteen topped the charts and a Nightingale sang in St John sub Castro, Lewes.

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St John sub Castro churchyard. Photo by Simon Carey

To be frank Nightingales aren’t much to look at. Small brown birds; a robin without the redbreast. But when they open their beak there’s a Susan Boyle like transformation. These drab birds become the world’s most celebrated vocalists. For centuries poets have praised their performance. Homer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Clare, Keats, Dylan and Cohen. Shelley claimed “A poet is a Nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds”. Trust young Percy Bysshe to believe the bird was wallowing in its own self-pity. The Nightingale’s song is actually both an aggressive war-cry and a sweet, structured sonnet. A hymn to the silence in the hope of enticing a passing female.

Listen to the song here

N2 Roger

Photo by Roger Wilmshurst

The Nightingale’s optimistic warbles have inspired everyone from Vera Lynn to Roxy Music. A BBC recording of a bird singing in Oxted in 1942 inadvertently captured the roar of Lancasters, Wellingtons, Stirlings and Halifaxes passing overhead laden with bombs destined for Germany. The contrast between innocence and beauty, terror and destruction make it the most powerful recording ever made. (here)

N1 JD

Photo by James Duncan

The sound of a Nightingale singing in the centre of Lewes may have been relegated to the bottom drawer of history and, sadly, its a song that is vanishing from all across England. Due to habitat destruction, the UK population of this amazing bird –so entwined in our cultural heritage – is in a steep decline. We are fortunate in Sussex that these wonderful birds still sing in many of our woodlands. Hope, as the poet Emily Dickinson famously wrote, is 'the thing with feathers' and we must never let the Nightingale's song of hope be silenced.

So, here's another song of hope about a Nightingale from Dame Vera Lynn (here).


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Comments

  • Susan (Georgies auntie):

    Thank you so much Michael for your wonderful daily diary, we’ve so enjoyed every one, and will greatly miss them. They’ve helped through this crazy time, thank you again. (Also the great music)

    19 Jun 2020 16:27:00

  • Ginny-Vic:

    Another useful reminder that in amongst all the destruction the magic of nature radiates through. What a juxtaposition of nightingales and bombs. Very thought provoking. Also, I am impressed you had a cassette player! Finally, is this where we place our bids for the SWT charity silent auction of the “mystery drawer!?” I’m hoping for the giant pencil! Ha ha!

    19 Jun 2020 17:01:00

  • CHARLOTTE EVANS:

    Great to here Vera Lynn just today, Michael!! RIP.
    I’ve sighted a yellow-collared mouse, nice little fellow, a hard life nipping out to get crumbs when no one was passing Brandy Hole pond; how about a lecture on the Rat (sighted yesterday by Chichester Canal)?? Many thanks. Charlotte

    19 Jun 2020 19:57:00

  • Mary:

    Michael all is not lost in Lewes… about 3 years ago I had a wonderful day at work (industrial estate behind Tescos) with a Nightingale singing all day just outside my window, in the brambles and scrubby bushes. (Sadly by the next day he had moved on to somewhere more suitable!)

    20 Jun 2020 08:40:00

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