The Song remains the same, just as amazing as it ever was!

Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song. John Milton.

There are few birds’ songs that have had the poet’s pen sharpened more accurately than that of the nightingale. I can’t do justice with my keyboard to its loud, sibilant song but I must admit I never tire of a dawn or 2 every couple of years being enchanted by this most magical of choristers.

Nightingales are migratory birds that arrive during April to breed in too few of our scrubby woodlands. Males tend to arrive before the ladies and it is now that they are most easy to photograph. The song does occur through the night but it is most easily heard at dawn when the loud and often explosive song is poured out of the scrub. Most of the time the birds tend to lurk in the shade but with a little patience he will now and then sing from a perch that is either bathed in lovely dawn light, or more usually is a little less dark than the murky depths!

Nightingales are generally a southern bird in the UK and are under increasing threat due to a lack of suitable woodland to breed in. Oddly the huge success of many of our deer is adding to this threat by the relentless browsing of the woods under storey. Woodland management for all wildlife is certainly a complex strategy.