This afternoon I was out enjoying the sunshine and doing a spot of fly-catching in the meadows near the meteorology field station. At about half past 3, I thought I heard – or perhaps imagined – the jug-jug-jug-jug phase of a nightingale’s song. A few minutes later and it sang again, a longer phrase: I was not suffering from sunstroke induced hallucinations but was indeed hearing a nightingale sing, from dense vegetation down near the lake.
It was still singing earlier this evening, thanks to Peter Gipson for the update. It’s late in the year now for a nightingale to be setting up territory, so this is probably either a late passage bird or a wanderer that has been displaced from one of the nearby nightingale hotspots at Theale to the west and Dinton Pastures to the east. Well worth hearing whilst it is with is. It was near the main bridge this afternoon and a bit further south this evening, sticking to the east side of the lake. Directions are, in any case, hardly necessary: if it does sing whilst you are out searching it will immediately give its location away!
