To ring a nightingale
WHEN my grandfather was a boy, there was music in the woods at night. From April, all across southern England, nightingales sang; by the time I have grandchildren, if I ever do, the dwindling population will have likely sung its last. In the past 40 years, numbers have declined by more than 90%. One of the most significant factors has been the destruction of typical scrubby nightingale habitat, which has been browsed out by our ever-growing deer population. Yet we must try to save them and more research must be done.
On a cold spring morning, just before dawn, I joined three ornithologists who tag nightingales in order to gain a deeper understanding of the little birds’ lives. When I held one we had caught in the palm of my hand, I felt deeply that I was holding
