 Coincidentally, although most of the depictions of the nightingale and its song in art and literature are of female nightingales, the female of the species does not sing—it is the male of the species who sings its characteristic song.In an early account, Sophocles wrote that Tereus was turned into a large-beaked bird whom some scholars translate as a hawk while a number of retellings and other works (including Aristophanes' ancient comedy, "The Birds") hold that Tereus was instead changed into a hoopoe.Various later translations of Ovid state that Tereus was transformed into other birds than the hawk and hoopoe, including references by Dryden and Gower to the lapwing.