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.
Denne historien er fra May 18, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 18, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
