They might not be much to look at, in fact anyone new to birdwatching might categorise one as an LBJ (little brown job), but the nightingale has inspired poets and lovers alike to win their place as one of the UK’s best loved birds. They are also one of the most endangered. In fact, the UK population of nightingales fell by a staggering 90% between 1967 and 2022. This places them firmly on the UK’s inauspicious red list, a list which identifies the risk that these birds may soon disappear from our shores. Thankfully, the wild spaces that abound in rewilded landscapes could provide the haven that nightingales need to recover.

It is the nightingale’s song that brings people the most joy. Whilst they sing at any time, day or night, it is in the stillness of the evening, when other birds have gone silent, that their rich and distinctive melody is most noteworthy. They do not sing for us, of course: the male nightingale is calling for a companion. If a hen flying over is impressed by his serenading, she will come down to him and assess his surroundings for a suitable place to nest. Any nightingale that fails to find a mate will carry on their full range of low and high notes into early June, though with an air of increasing hopelessness. (It really is a full range though! Nightingales are known to produce over a thousand different sounds compared to a blackbird’s still impressive one hundred). They will have been singing in the southern areas of the UK since April, having honed their skills through practice whilst wintering in West Africa. For any person lucky enough to live in these parts of the UK when nightingales were more commonplace, their song became synonymous with Springtime.

Unfortunately, many people in the same regions today experience a more silent Spring, with the distribution of nightingales having contracted by 42.6% since the 1960s. Whilst nightingale populations outside of the UK are pretty stable, here changes to farming and forestry practices, as well as the introduction on non-native deer species, have led to a loss in suitable habitats for these birds.

The Power of Scrub

Nightingales, like the classic prima donna, are choosy. Their dream home needs to include an impenetrable thicket that protects their nests from predators and dense vegetation at a higher level (up to two metres) where they can sing in safety. They need areas of bare earth where they can rootle for invertebrates, and they need a nearby source of water too.

But, as the ‘peasant’ poet John Clare wrote in his poem about searching for a nightingale nest, “nature is the builder and contrives homes for her children’s comfort.” This has certainly been seen in rewilded landscapes where such a perfect home for the nightingale sits within a natural mosaic of habitats.

Conservation wisdom had for some time held that coppiced woodland was the best habitat for the nightingale. However, increasingly it is being found that nightingales are better suited to scrub including blackthorn, hawthorn, and bramble – all species that were referenced in Clare’s poem back in 1832. In understanding why our conservationists may have been misled, it is worth noting the observation of writer and conservationist Isabella Tree: “in our depleted landscape we may be observing it at the very limit of its abilities – not where it wants to be at all, but where it is clinging on for dear life.”

And Isabella Tree should know, nightingale territories at the Knepp Estate jumped from just seven to thirty-four when she and her husband, Charlie Burrell, made the decision to embark on their inspirational rewilding project. In 2021, forty different singing males were identified on their land. This is down to the expanded hedgerows and naturally developed scrub which supports the nightingale for twice as long as a coppice would.

And it isn’t just at Knepp that rewilding has provided the perfect arena for the nightingale’s musical prowess. At Strawberry Hill Farm, the happy accident of passive rewilding has also been a success story for this songbird’s survival. Now under the care of the local Wildlife Trust, after a fundraising campaign to protect this special place, Strawberry Hill Farm has one of the highest concentrations of nightingales in the country. Since the farm owner, Hugh White, left his 153 hectares to go wild in 1988, it has become the largest area of scrubland in the whole of central England and home to about half the nightingales still left in Bedfordshire.

Though secretive, the nightingale really is a star of the rewilding world. There are even opportunities to go on nightingale safaris and to enjoy singing with nightingales concerts in areas where wildness abounds. This is testament to the fact that, when nature is allowed to thrive, humans are also gifted something special. But, with the very real possibility that the nightingale may one day disappear from our island, if we are to continue to hear them, then we need to learn to love scrub. Very few of us have control over the area of land needed to set aside at least an acre for scrubland (as recommended by the British Trust for Ornithology). It is therefore vital that the nation’s largest landowners recognise its value too and that they are encouraged to bring back the wild spaces our nightingales need.