Nicolas Venette's Traité du rossignol (1697) and the discovery of migratory restlessness

Abstract

We identify the little known, anonymous author of a treatise on nightingales, Traité du rossignol, as Nicolas Venette (1633–1698), a physician based in La Rochelle, France. As well as writing about nightingales, Venette had a wide range of scientific interests, and produced several other books, including an extraordinarily popular sex manual. In his nightingale monograph Venette made observations and wrote in a logical, “scientific” manner, critically assessing previous speculations about the causes of migration in birds. In addition, he was the first to describe the phenomenon of migratory restlessness and to accurately identify its biological significance. Venette is therefore one of a small number of individuals who began the development of scientific ornithology in the seventeenth century.