Science reveals the truth about the English nightingale's plight

Nightingales, those glorious heralds of summer, really don’t have much to sing about.

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Far fewer females are around to be seduced by the males’ melodious notes, the scrubland they breed in is being munched away and they spend their tropical winters in the wrong place.

New research shows that English nightingales (there aren’t any in the rest of the UK) wing their way 3,000 miles to a specific region in and around The Gambia, Africa’s smallest country. By confining themselves to such a highly localised area, they stand less chance of survival when conditions turn bad. Using tiny data-gathering backpacks, scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) have discovered English nightingales don’t mix with their European cousins who scatter widely across the rest of West Africa, lowering their risk of succumbing to droughts, climate change and habitat loss.