The plans for live-streaming nightingale song from North Kent on 18 May are moving along. I’m not necessarily helping much as the technology is a bit over my head – but my colleague Brian Reid is regularly giving me comforting updates on progress.
In my last post, I recalled trying to record nightingales in the 60s in Kent (with a little success) – my next encounter with recorded nightingales happen more recently and more publicly – on the Simon Mayo show, no less.
I got the chance to appear on the show to confirm that Simon’s recording of nightingale was indeed, just that. And if I may, here’s a tip if you ever get asked to identify something on air, live – always, always ask to hear it first. Live broadcasting is no place for original thought!
Anyway – I didn’t.
What could possibly go wrong, it was either going to be a nightingale or possibly the ‘street lamp nightingale’ – otherwise known as a robin (robin’s sing in the night when near bright lights – leading to many a hasty mis-identification). I know the difference, I thought – simple, play the tape Simon!
So at peak drive-time on BBC Radio 2 – a sound like nothing I’d ever heard filled my headphones. A cacophony of notes jumbled together phrases of nightingale song, but compressed into an explosion of notes.
Actual panic.
I was about to burble incoherently on live radio with days of pointing and laughing from friends and colleagues to follow.
What was it – some tropical species? A wild guess was impossible – I had no clue.
‘So’ says Simon, ‘was that a nightingale?’
Pause.
‘Um – well it sounds a bit like a nightingale but singing like I’ve never heard before, what a strange recording’. Grasping at straws I made some comment about it sounding like it had been synthesised.
I could here in Simon’s voice that he clearly thought his expert guest was falling somewhat short of expectations – until he revealed that his engineer had taken all the spaces out of the song to make the clip shorter!
Relieved and somewhat vindicated – I carried the conversation on to make a couple of points about the plight of nightingales – by which time the offending engineer had replaced the crucial silences between the notes thus restoring the song to its former glory.
Nightingale song (with the pauses between the notes) is a pleasure beyond compare, this is why Chris Rose is asking the BBC to repeat their tour de force of 90 years ago and broadcast live nightingales – do sign the petition!
If our plans come off we’ll bring live nightingales to the web from North Kent on the evening of 18 May (the actual anniversary of the BBC’s broadcast) – you can help nightingales by objecting to building houses on one of the best places for them in England or supporting our work for migrant birds – Birds without Borders.
Follow me on twitter.