Birdwatching - 3100 🐦

🦉 The bluethroat (Luscinia svecica)

• Luscinia (lat.) Nightingale
• svecica suecicus (lat.) Swedish; the name svecica, according to the history of the description, is not a toponym, but is given for the color of the male's chest:
  Olof Rudbeck junior, Swedish botanist and birdwatcher, mentor to Carl Linnaeus, having discovered the bluethroat in 1695 in Lapland, he gave it the name Avis Carolina in honor of the Swedish king Charles XI and the blue-yellow Swedish flag (in those days the yellow color on the flag was more reddish), and K. Linnaeus in 1758, when the absolute power of the monarchy in Sweden was no longer, considered the name svecica more correct than carolina (Jobling, 2010)

This nightingale is simply a master of stealth. It prefers dense thickets near water, where its bright blue throat with a red "star" (in males) is rarely noticeable. However, its song gives it away, it is ringing, loud, sometimes including imitations of other birds that live nearby.

Bluethroats are among the first nightingales to arrive, already at the end of April, when there may still be snow on the banks. Males immediately occupy territories and begin to sing, often sitting on top of a bush, but at the slightest danger they dive deep and disappear among the branches. Interestingly, they can be easily lured if you turn on a recording of their voice, the male often flies out into an open place, as if challenging the "competitor".