Ode to a nightingale app: Berliners track ‘opera star’ of birds

Priced out of Berkeley Square, the nightingales are the latest citizens of nowhere to migrate from London to Berlin.

And the nightingale’s recent return, amid the muted city sounds of spring 2020, has given many Berliners a welcome lift.

In the last number of years, with little fuss, the German capital has become Europe’s unofficial hotspot for nightingales – and nightingale research.

A crowd-sourcing smartphone app has allowed thousands of Berliners record nightingale song in their neighbourhood and upload the recordings – including location data – to a central database at Berlin’s Natural History Museum.

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The data collected in the last two years has allowed researchers there identify the birds’ song patterns and main hangouts, usually the edges of city green spaces.

An average nightingale can sing 190 different song stanzas and, previously, experts had classified 700 types of song. But Berlin’s nightingale app has allowed researchers identify more than 2,300 songs and variations.

“The nightingale is the opera star among birds and Berlin is their capital,” said Dr Silke Voigt-Heucke, one of the project researchers, to local broadcaster RBB.

She says it is unclear why nightingales are attracted to cities, where they have to compete with traffic and other ambient noise to be heard. One guess she offers is that Berlin’s parks, known for thriving on neglect, are the perfect playground: “As ground-breeders nightingales like thick hedges, greenery and leaves and the more natural, wild parks of Berlin.”

The nightingale is almost unknown in Ireland, say ornithologists, while the population in the UK has dropped more than 90 per cent in recent years. Climate change is altering migration patterns in western Europe but the populations in central and eastern regions appear more stable.

Nocturnal soundtrack

By now most Berliners are used to the nightingale’s distinctive song at this time of year, from emotional sobs to wheel-in-need-of-oil squeaks, but the birds’ nocturnal soundtrack has captured musicians over the years.

In 1940, the British forces’ sweetheart Vera Lynn sang of Berkeley Square’s nightingales; a year later her German rival, Evelyn Künneke, hit back with “Sing, nightingale sing, a song from the old days/ sing nightingale sing, touch my tired heart.”

Today a new generation of musicians in Berlin is adding to the cultural history of nightingales as solitary, singing symbols of love and longing.

Since 2013 US-based musician and philosopher David Rothenberg has travelled to Berlin at this time of year in pursuit of the songbirds.

In his just-published book, City of Nightingales – Berlin’s Perfect Sound, and a one-hour documentary, available online, he explains his quest to improvise on his clarinet with what he calls the “avian musicians”.

“The biggest thing is to not play, just listen most of the time,” he said. “Leave space to take in something you’ve never heard before.”

This year’s restrictions meant Rothenberg couldn’t travel to Berlin so, like many other musicians, he organised a virtual concert on his Facebook page. While he played in his New York apartment, a speaker transmitted his melodies to Berlin’s Treptower Park where, heard by nightingales, their response was transmitted 6,400km back across the Atlantic.

“It was so exciting and melancholic,” said Rothenberg afterwards on German radio. “Are they going to learn from me? That’s unlikely given they have such an amazing repertoire.”

Tourist-free times

His personal theory is that the birds like urban settings because they are attracted by the ambient noise.

One thing is for certain: the competition to rise above the din helps each Pavarotti of the undergrowth attract a mate before they return to Africa in August.

Between now and then, after lengthy solo singing, the lucky ones find each other and spend a few further days courting in song. All going well they build a nest and get down to breeding. Once the new batch are ready, the father teaches them his repertoire which they take and modify for themselves before flying away again.

For Berlin-based botanist Sarah Darwin, great-great-granddaughter of Charles and co-organiser of this research project, the nocturnal birdsong remains thrilling.

“There are certain things in nature you never get used to,” she said, “and the nightingale is one of them.”