Correct habitat

Habitats can change quicker than you think, and will do, if left to themselves, which is one of the reasons that we regularly revisit Go Birding sites.

Wetlands will silt up and start to turn into scrub, and then forest, for example. And those changes can mean changes in bird populations. They’re not necessarily bad news, as long as alternative habitat is created to replace any that disappears.

When it isn’t, a problem occurs. Nightingales, for example, need a very particular kind of woodland, with a certain density of understorey. At sites where this is managed, such as our local Castor Hanglands NNR, that means a stable and even slightly increasing Nightingale population. But in other places, the habitat can be ephemeral, and so can the birds.

In spring 2019, our photographer Tom Bailey found three Nightingales singing at an East Midlands site. They were just off a well-used public footpath, next to a busy sailing lake, but the habitat was just right. What are the chances they’ll still be there this year (we couldn’t check in 2020, for obvious reasons)? Probably quite low. If, as I suspect, the site is left untouched, natural progression may have turned that ‘ just right’ copse into a too-dense tangle of scrub. If the local council have done work, I suspect they’ll have taken away too much of the understorey.

The next step, then, is to look for similar sites nearby. You never know when you might get lucky.