Nightingale song must not die out

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TONY Rivers hit the birdwatching jackpot this week when he managed to photograph a nightingale.

He was still thrilled when I bumped into him at “Nightingale Central” – officially Essex Wildlife Trust’s Fingringhoe Wick reserve near Colchester.

Tony, 75, a retired school technician from Halstead, 20 miles away, said: “You often hear them here but you rarely see them. It was amazing. It just sat up so close.”

Last year, when the reserve was closed due to lockdown, the trust’s Emily McParland mapped 42 singing males on this 90-acre reserve.

To put that in context, the most I have ever found in one place was two. Nightingale numbers have plummeted by 90 per cent in the past 50 years to about 5,500 pairs.

So for every 10 nightingales singing their hearts out in 1970 we now have just one. That is a terrible shame.

The most famous song in nature begins with haunting whistles that capture your attention and then explodes into bubbling and pops and grunts and clicks and trills, rising to powerful crescendoes. But no song is the same. Emily says: “Their song is bonkers. You cannot mistake a nightingale. If you stand too close your whole body vibrates with all these crazy sounds.”

I visited Fingringhoe because Wildlife Trusts are campaigning for 30 per cent of the UK’s land and sea to be protected for wildlife by 2030.

As part of the Daily Express Green Britain Needs You campaign, we urge the Government, businesses, the public, anyone, to make more space for nature.

We and eco-entrepreneur Dale Vince are also helping the RSPB raise funds to buy a nature reserve in the New Forest – Horse Common.

The RSPB plans to restore this 91 acres of forestry plantations to natural heathland, scrub, valley mires and mixed woodland. One of the species it hopes to attract is the nightingale.

For all my efforts, I did not get a glimpse of one, but I left with my ears ringing with their joyful music.

We need to do much more to give this little bird a lifeline. That really would be hitting the jackpot.

YOU can help try to create a new home for nightingales by joining the Daily Express Make More Space for Nature campaign. Send cheques made payable to “RSPB” to Daily Express Horse Common appeal, RSPB, The Lodge, Sandy, Beds, SG19 2DL or donate via rspb.org.uk/ expressappeal