SWEET NIGHTINGALES

Press, 10 May 1980, Page 17

SWEET NIGHTINGALES

A Garland of Nighgtingales. By Hockley Clarke. Gordon and Cremonesi, 1979. 120 pp. $15.95. (Reviewed by Stephen Erber) This is a beautiful piece of book production of a quality too rarely seen these days. It is finely printed and margined, with clever decorative illustrations. The book illustrates the author’s devotion to wildlife and his concern at the steadily diminishing wildlife environment. In a sense the book is an anthology of reference to to the nightingale in literature and in early naturalist writings. Keat’s famous ode is represented. Dryden is there too. There are contemporary and early descriptions of the bird’s habits and habitat, but as may be expected a large portion of the book is devoted to descriptions of its; song. This is compared with that of the blackbird and other birds, but it seems that even in the affections of a devoted blackbird lover the nightingale ranks highly. Perhaps the last word may be left to Maurice Burton writing

in the "Daily Telegraph” in one of his "Nature Notes.” "Many people have a preference for a blackbird’s song as against a nightingale’s. I always agree with them and then hurriedly have to say that the nightingale at its best is quite superlative.”