Publisher's Synopsis
For a thousand years the nightingale has been the most celebrated song-bird in the western world. In French troubadour lyrics, Romantic poems, even wartime propaganda, its exquisite oratorical song has symbolized both the renewing powers of nature and human love.;Yet the real nightingale is a drab-coloured migrant, whose song is reckoned by scientists to be no different from any other bird's - a proclamation of territorial rights. So why have humans always fallen under its spell? This book looks at the natural history as well as the literary history of the nightingale.
