To ring a nightingale

On a cold spring morning, Patrick Galbraith held a nightingale in the palm of his hand. Yet, by the time he has grandchildren, this amazing little bird may have sung its last

- Patrick Galbraith

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 much more than feather and bone—I was holding one of our richest cultural symbols. To lose the nightingale in England would be to lose a part of ourselves.

‘No two nightingales are the same’

Crouched by his tent, in the dawn dew, James Booty is resting his notepad on his knee. ‘Wing length 86 was that?’ Rob Duncan glances down to where his thumbnail sits on the metal ruler. ‘Eighty-six,’ he confirms, ‘that’s big, quite big that.’ When he lifts the nightingale to his lip and blows on it, the feathers part to reveal a thin-skinned purple breast. ‘You can see he’s male because of that cloacal protuberance, that little bulge. Do you see, it’s swollen with sperm?’ He blows once more then runs the back of his index finger across the feathers.