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Monday, October 13, 2025

Japanese “Nightingale” – Ornithology


The English title “nightingale” refers back to the Japanese Bush Warbler, a standard songbird in Japan. The singing of the bush warbler has inspired the protecting of those birds as caged birds in properties. To encourage singing the cages of birds had been lined with a picket field with a small paper window that allowed solely subdued gentle in. (Actually, I don’t know the way limiting gentle coming into the field would encourage singing.) The chook had one other use, although. The bush warbler’s droppings, Uguisu no enjoyable,  comprise an enzyme that has been used for a very long time as a pores and skin whitening agent, to take away dye from cloth, and to take away high-quality wrinkles. It’s generally offered as “uguisu powder”. The droppings are additionally used to take away stains from kimono. There is just one place at present in Japan the place you’ll be able to nonetheless purchase nightingale feces like geishas did a few years in the past. Apparently Tom Cruise makes use of the stuff to take care of his youthful look.

Each female and male Japanese Bush Warblers are olive-brown on the higher components and beige on the underparts. They’ve creamy superciliaries. The coloration varies barely between the subspecies or the native populations. Japanese Bush Warblers are distributed in northeastern China, the Russian Far East, the Korean Peninsula and Japan. They like bushes at a forest edge and in an open space of a forest from a montane belt to a subalpine zone, although they’re extensively distributed in a dense thicket of bamboo grass and bushes They had been launched into Hawaii within the early 1900’s for insect management, the one non-native location they inhabit.

It’s one among Japan’s songbirds, and can be referred to as the “haruen-dori” due to its name “Hohokekyo”. When it chirps, it stretches its neck to make its voice echo, giving it the English title of “Bush Warbler”. The day when the warbler chirps are heard for the primary time within the yr known as the “first chirping day” and is used to designate the approaching of spring together with cherry blossoms and swallows. Horornis diphone, its scientific title, means “dusty chook with two voices” an obvious reference to its boring coloration and two-part track, a protracted tone adopted by a warble.

In lots of castles, temples, and palaces, such because the Nijō Fort, in KyotoJapan, flooring had been put in within the hallways that made a chirping sound when walked upon, supposedly sounding like a nightingale, giving them the title “nightingale flooring.” The hallway flooring had been inbuilt such a method that the nails used to assemble the ground rubbed in opposition to a steel clamp, making chirping noises. An info register Nijō fort states that “The singing sound will not be truly intentional, stemming quite from the motion of nails in opposition to clumps within the flooring attributable to put on and tear through the years”. However legend has it that the squeaking flooring had been safety gadgets to warn of intruders. The legend continues, stating that pleasant guests would know the best way to stroll on the flooring in order to supply a recognizable “pleasant” chirp.

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