Nightingales!

This blogpost I will leach on recording of others (many thanks for that!), but I think it will be worthwile when you want to learn something about the difference between the two species of nightingales, using the thriller. For several days, Tim van Oerle heard a Nightingale singing near Zevenaar. He made a recording because is was not sure of which species it was. It had an 'thriller' and as most of you will know, this is typical for Thrush Nightingale (Luscinia luscinia). He still had doubts, because the song was rather quick. The recording can be found here:

My first impression was Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), however: why? It indeed had a thriller. So I decided to dive into the matters of nightingales. I looked for several recordings on www.xeno-canto.org for both species. I found these two very useful. The first one was of a Common Nightingale in the Germany, recorded by Claus Fisher:

And this recording of a Thrush Nightingale of Jarek Matusiak:

To look for the difference in structure between the rattles, I composed an audiofile with all three rattles and made a picture of it. The structure is quite different:

Sorry it's in Dutch, but from left to right: nightingale spec, Common Nightingale and Thrush Nightingale.

As you can see from the picture, Thrush Nightingale has two short 'notes' after each other, whereas Common Nightingale has one. This gives the Thrush Nightingale a more crackling rattle. Furthermore, (although not visible on this picture), the song of the nightingale of Tim was fast and missed the characteristic deep and low sounds that makes the song of Thrush Nightingale makes it possible to listen to it for several hours!

Conclusion, it has to be a Common Nightingale, but at least I've learned something! If someone has any comments on this, please give them!