Nightingale Facts
The common nightingale is a small brown songbird of Europe, Africa and Asia, prized for the male's powerful, beautiful song.
- Class
- Bird
- Scientific name
- Luscinia megarhynchos
- Conservation status
- Least concern (IUCN)
About the nightingale
To look at, it is plain: brown above with a reddish tail, buff to white underneath, and about 15 to 16.5 cm long, a little bigger than a European robin. The sound is the showpiece. The male's song has inspired fairy tales, opera and lots of poetry, yet for most of history few people realized that females do not sing at all. The name joins 'night' with an Old English word meaning 'to sing.'
This migrant eats insects, breeds in forests and scrub across Europe and the Palearctic, and spends winters in Africa south of the Sahara. Its nest sits low, on or just above the ground in thick plants, and never occurs naturally in the Americas. In the UK, at the northern edge of its range, numbers dropped 53 percent between 1995 and 2008. Europe as a whole still has an estimated 3.2 to 7 million breeding pairs.
Did you know?
- Three subspecies are recognized, and all of them winter in Africa.
- The genus name Luscinia is simply Latin for nightingale.
- A survey in 2012 and 2013 found roughly 3,300 nightingale territories in the UK.
Questions about the nightingale
Do female nightingales sing?
No. Only the males sing, a fact most people historically did not know.
Is the nightingale endangered?
No. It is listed as least concern overall, though it is red-listed in the UK after steep declines.
Sources
- Wikidata Q25393, checked October 8, 2026
- Wikipedia: Common nightingale, checked October 8, 2026
Facts are compiled from these open sources and rewritten in our own words. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.