Trapping the Secrets of the Nightingale

Chris Hughes ringing work at our Bainton Heath reserve made local and national news in August, with only the tenth ever overseas retrap of a nightingale in 100 years of bird ringing.

Nightingales are one of the best known birds – everyone has heard of them, but few have heard them. In Peterborough we are lucky to have several sites that support flourishing populations of this symbolic bird of summer evenings. This bird was ringed as an adult female at Bainton on on 5 June 2008 by Chris as part of the British Trust for Ornithology’s Constant Effort Sites scheme. It was caught by French ringers south of La Rochelle on the south-west coast of France. The distance flown was 745km but she still had a long way to go to sub-Saharan Africa for the winter.

Amazingly we still have no information about where in Africa nightingales spend the winter. Chris writes, 'A lot of the important information we get from bird ringing relates to annual changes in productivity and survival but movements like this add real excitement for the trained volunteers who give so much to their hobby. It's only a matter of time until some lucky ringer receives news that his or her Nightingale is the first to have been found in Africa. Until then, all we can do is guess where they go - and worry about the ever-declining numbers that arrive back in England each spring.’