FROM SURREY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 677, 31 May 1929, Page 6

FROM SURREY

Aucklander Hears Song Of Nightingale AN EMPIRE BROADCAST A listener-in in Devonport on Wed. nesday heard a nightingale singing in a Surrey wood. The song was picked up the English shortwave experimental station SSW, and broadcast during its usual Empire programme. A jazz item was switched off abruptly at 10.20 a.m. to allow the first clear notes to come oyer the air. Then, for nearly seven minutes, listeners throughout the world were treated to perhaps the most wonderful broadcast of the present day. Deep in the leafy twilight, of an English wood, this songster poured out its throbbing melody. New Zealanders heard it clearly. This was by no means the first time a nightingale has been broadcast. As far back as 1924 radio magazines of the day made a feature of the earlier ■attempts. The difficulties confronting the man with the microphone were many and great. Such a shy bird could not be induced to break forth into song at just the right moment or in any but natural surroundings. Radio electricians, therefore, had to lay miles of land-lines from the studio to the nightingale,’s haunts, and to place dozens of microphones at points of vantage in the hope that the bird might sing near one of them. It was suggested that music might attract the nightingale and persuade him to broadcast, and.this was actually successful. Miss Beatrice Harrison, the well-known ’cellist, played a plaintive air on her instrument one soft moonlit night in'May. Radio men were hidden nearby and, in the control room many miles away, others waited anxiously. The method was successful. Not only did the song go “over the air,” but a record was made containing both the ’cello and the nightingale’s song. Broadcasts of this type are made once or twice every year now and can be relied on by radio engineers. During the summer months, when the female bird is sitting on her eggs, the male bird can generally be found perched close by and will continue to pour out his rich song undeterred by the presence of radio mechanics. At other times, however, the bird is difficult to approach and watchful broadcasters have waited for days in vain.

It is unlikely that the nightingale will he broadcast again this year, as it seldom sings after the mating season, although its calls are often heard until the migration in August or September.