Worcestershire County Council

Issue 9 Spring 2002

• Nightingales in Worcestershire
• Progress report on the Biodiversity Action Plan
• Regional bid success

Scrub up…...encouraging habitat creation for nightingales Sixty years ago the rich, fruity song of the nightingale would have been a common sound on warm spring evenings in the woods and thickets of Worcestershire. Sadly numbers have been declining recently - in 1999 singing males were only heard at 59 locations, lower numbers than in previous years - and it seems that the population could have decreased by more than half in the last twenty years. For this reason nightingales were one of the species included in the Worcestershire Biodiversity Action Plan.

One of the areas in the county where you might still hear nightingales is at Severn Trent Water’s Water Treatment Works at Strensham. The scrubby vegetation that has grown up around the site provides the ideal conditions for these rather elusive birds. An evening walk was recently hosted by Severn Trent Water to mark the publication of a leaflet which provides advice and information on creating habitat that will attract nightingales.

According to research by the British Trust for Ornithology nightingales have rather particular needs when it comes to scrub. They prefer thickets of young, vigorous blackthorn or hawthorn, especially where a dense canopy of twigs and leaves descends to the ground around the edges, leaving bare or leaf-litter covered ground in the centre. They use the cave-like spaces beneath the scrub for foraging for insects and nesting.

At Strensham scrub habitat of the right structure for nightingales was created as part of a landscaping scheme and was promptly occupied by nightingales. Male nightingales return to the same spot each year to sing, and young males are attracted to breed near older singing males if there is suitable habitat. So, if more land-owners and managers can be persuaded to create similar scrub habitat in the right areas, we could start to see a reverse of the decline of this wonderful bird.

"That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease"

Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats

Good news and bad news - reporting progress on the Worcestershire BAP

The latest figures for nightingales were just some of the statistics that were reported in the Summary of Progress against Objectives that was recently produced by the Worcestershire Biodiversity Partnership. This document summarises some of the gains and losses of species and habitats, and also describes the wealth of work that has been undertaken in relation to the Worcestershire BAP.

Click here to download a copy of the full report, but in summary the message is mixed - in some cases habitats are being restored and re-created, and some species are increasing in numbers or stable. Other habitats and species however are not doing so well.