Bursting into song

When the human world is in turmoil, we can all take comfort in the beyond-human one. Birdsong is proven to give us a natural high, and one song in particular has been written about by almost every nature writer: that of the male nightingale. Shy and dowdy he may be, but when he opens that beak, he has the power and clarity of an opera singer, and the improvisation and range of a jazz diva.

Though legendary for singing on May nights, this relative of the robin also performs in early morning and at dusk. The fact that it skulks in the shadows only adds to the sense of occasion. New undergrowth and scrub are what the species needs, ideally less than 10 years old. Sadly, heavy browsing by deer and a decline in traditional woodland management have sent numbers into freefall. There’s also evidence from Spain that, due to drought, some nightingales there are evolving shorter wings, leading to fewer surviving the migration to and from Africa. It’s not yet known if this affects the UK population. But as Luke Massey puts it in Red Sixty Seven, a book celebrating our 67 most vulnerable birds, “Will we really let this be the last song of the nightingale?”

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More about this special bird: nightingalenights.org.uk