LEND ME YOUR EARS
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.
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