The nightingale is a bird belonging to the order passeriformes, which was once classified as thrush of thrush family. But now it is generally classified as Cetaceae.
Nightingale is a migratory insect-eating bird that lives in the forests of Europe and Asia. They nest in low bushes and migrate to southern Africa in winter.
The nightingale is smaller than the European robin, about 15- 16.5cm long, with reddish brown feathers and red tail feathers, and pale yellow to white abdominal feathers.
Male nightingales are famous for their beautiful singing, and even human singers envy their wide vocal range. The nightingale sings loudly and sweetly. Although nightingales also sing during the day, they mainly sing at night, which is obviously different from other birds. So the nightingale has the word "night" in its English name. Recently, scientists also found that nightingales cry louder in or near cities, in order to drown out the noise of cities.
In western literature, the nightingale first appeared in the play Birds by aristophanes, an ancient Greek playwright and comedian.
There is a beautiful legend about the nightingale in Greek mythology. Ayrton, daughter of pandaren, wife of Zeiss, king of Thebes. They have a daughter, named Etilles, and Edong once killed her daughter by mistake. Since then, eastern Hubei has fallen into endless sadness and regret. The gods pitied her and turned her into a nightingale. Since then, the nightingale has cried every night to express her grief for her daughter.
Some people think that the nightingale should be a nightingale (Mr. Zheng, a famous ornithologist in China, holds this view), with a body length of about 28 cm. People call it a nightingale because of its beautiful singing and singing at night. Nighthawk, also known as mosquito mother bird. Li Zhaozuo's Tang Shi Supplement records: "There are mosquito repellent birds in Jiangdong, which sing at night in summer and spit mosquitoes in the bushes." It can be seen that the ancients observed and understood it, but they misunderstood "mosquito-spitting". Nighthawks, birds that rest during the day and move at night, like to eat mosquitoes, scarabs and other insects. Nighthawk has a big mouth. It has extraordinary aerial predation ability. Sometimes it flies low in the grass and preys on mosquitoes with its mouth open, so it is misunderstood as "mosquitoes spit."
There is also a popular legend in Europe: nighthawks have big mouths, and they often mix with sheep and secretly suck goat's milk; So at that time, Europeans called the nighthawk a "goat-sucking bird", which means "goat-sucking bird". In fact, don't steal goat's milk, and don't harm people and animals; On the contrary, they are beneficial to human beings. They prey on a large number of mosquitoes and scarabs. Someone once dissected the stomach of a nighthawk and saw more than 500 mosquitoes inside. It can be seen that they are friends who kill pests for mankind. Because people appreciate the singing of the nighthawk, they leave a beautiful image in their imagination. I know nighthawk is not beautiful. Almost dark brown, mixed with various stripes. During the day, I like to crouch on the hillside grass or branches to rest. Feathers are similar to bark and are not easy to be found, so my fellow villagers call them "sticking bark".
There are about 90 species of nighthawks in the world, some of which are widely distributed all over the world. There are 8 species in China and 5 species in Yunnan. The hairy-legged nighthawk and the black-topped frog-billed nighthawk are only distributed in Yunnan, China. There is a forest nighthawk, which is found in Taiwan Province Province and Hainan Island except Yunnan. Another common nighthawk is widely distributed in the north and south of China, especially in the south of the Yangtze River.