Birds: Lend me an ear

In a previous issue, you found me scratching mosquito bites and staring desperately into the canopy of a Mozambican forest. And then almost coming to blows with a birding buddy because he’d glimpsed a rare cuckoo while I could tick only 70 different species of leaves. This time, I’m on my knees in front of a bush in Botswana’s Chobe National Park. My quarry is a thrush nightingale.

The first time you hear a nightingale, your life changes forever. That sound has to be one of nature’s crowning achievements, and has inspired poets and artists for centuries. If I were on my deathbed with five minutes to live, I would ask the nurse to go to the birdcall website xeno-canto.org and play me a nightingale clip to send me on my way.

But the first time you see a nightingale, it’s…meh. A smallish, grey-brown blob skulking behind a self-imposed prison of leaves and twigs. But there I was in Chobe, and without being able to see at least something moving in the thicket, I couldn’t tick the bird. A bit ridiculous if we’re being honest. I crept closer on my knees, praying with my eyes wide open, centimetre by painful centimetre.