Thrills and trills

In a sense, the song of the bird in the title of this short, hugely thoughtful and fascinating book is a measure of the gap between nature and human culture. On the one hand stands the most mythologised, celebrated and interrogated maker of natural sound on earth: the nightingale. On the other, the most densely populated metropolitan area in western Europe: Berlin.

One might expect our light-winged dryad, in honour of its place in poetry, art, folktale and fiction, to sing in a sylvan glade by a brook full of beaded bubbles. Not a bit of it. It’s by traffic lights in a Berlin park. The bird itself is quite indifferent to the three millennia of cultural churn it has inspired. It is drawn to the German capital by insect biomass and the right vegetation density.

What lies between the two worlds, bridging and speaking to both, is the creature’s song, which has entranced David Rothenberg for many years.