Common Nightingale

This plain brown songbird is famous for its powerful, varied song delivered from dense scrub and thicket, often at night as well as by day, across woodland edges and hedgerows in Europe, North Africa, and southwest Asia. It is a summer visitor to its breeding grounds, arriving in spring when males sing most intensively to establish territory, and is far more often heard than seen as it stays low in cover. Listening at dusk in scrubby woodland margins during late spring is the most reliable way to encounter it.