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Chapter 1: What unique experience does Singing with Nightingales offer?
And I love that sound of the cuckoo, because it almost feels like everyone's coming in. How's your day been? Yeah, it's been all right. What have you been up to? Oh, you know, just catching some worms and food for us all to eat so we don't die. The lack of human intervention is here. It feels like the bricks, the concrete, the fences, they've all disappeared.
And actually what is now around us is an abundance of trees, of grass. And that's kind of heightened the sound of the birds. There's no sound of traffic. There's no hustle and bustle of people. And actually it feels there's more of a connection between me and my space and the space and me. And actually it feels that nature is greater. It's beautiful. It really is magical.
And it definitely feels like the evening chorus. Everyone's coming home.
I'm Sean Bean and this is Get Birding in collaboration with Forest Holidays. In this episode, we're heading out after dark for a special event, singing with nightingales.
This is work of firstly of gratitude, of thanks for such an important character who's been part of our ancient kinship with the natural world. We'll be joining folk singer and nature activist Sam Lee. A night ago could be very useful for young lovers. They sing at 90 decibels, so they're so prolifically loud that they would cover up the squeals of delight of young lovers.
Our resident nature beatboxer and composer, Jason Singh.
The importance of kind of human collaboration with nature and wildlife, I think it's part of the fabric of what we are.
So,
As a child growing up, we used to listen to a lot of songs from Hindi films and from Bollywood films. And one of the most famous playback singers of those songs was Lata Magesh. And she was known as the Nightingale of India. So we kind of had this word, the Nightingale, the Nightingale.
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Chapter 2: How do nightingales contribute to the ambiance of the woods?
Jason Singh is a nature beatboxer and composer. He spends his life exploring the relationship between us and the natural world through sound.
The first time that I actually ever heard the song up close and personal was when I was in Tiergarten in Berlin. I was walking through the gardens at Tiergarten and right in front of me, like four foot away, was this nightingale. I think the complexity of the song of the nightingale is fascinating.
For me, it's so closely related to a lot of the rhythms and musical genres that I've grown up with, like drum and bass, like jungle, like Indian classical music, where you're hearing these beautiful rhythmic complexities. And to hear it in this bird, to me, it's... It's so inspiring. But also there's a melancholy to it. I've heard it a lot at night. I've heard it in darkness.
You don't see the bird. It's invisible. And yet you kind of hear these very strong, sharp sounds. Once you hear it, you'll never forget it.
Nightingales are famous for their rich, powerful song, often heard in the dead of night.
So we've just arrived in the woods in Barkham in Sussex for Singing with Nightingales and it's an evening that's going to be led by folk singer Sam Lee. And there's going to be a meal. It's going to be a gathering where we're all together listening to songs, listening to stories.
And then we're going to go deep, like deep into the woods to hear a concert, a duet collaboration with Kaya, a banjo player, folk singer, and a nightingale or nightingales. There's many emotions about this experience. There's this feeling of reverence, of being in the presence of this bird and what that will be like. And at the same time, I'm really excited. I'm excited to hear something so rare
It's like finding a rare record or it's like going when you're digging for tracks. That thing of actually coming across something and going, wow, like I can't believe that I'm hearing this. I kind of have that similar kind of anticipation and emotion of what's it going to be like? And is it going to happen? That's the other thing, you know. But we're surrounded by birds here tonight.
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Chapter 3: What personal stories connect Jason Singh to the nightingale's song?
It's incredible the range of voices that are being sounded out in this place and space. And to hear the kind of... the majesty of the ultimate bird we've traveled so far to come and experience.
Nightingales have been enchanting people for centuries. Their songs rise through the night, full of twists and flourishes, and for anyone lucky enough to hear one, it's hard not to stop and listen. Poets, composers, even everyday walkers have tried to answer back, to echo these notes, to feel part of their world for a moment.
Good evening, everybody. Hello, hello. Welcome to Sing with Nightingales and to the Log Cabin, our guest musician for tonight, who I'm so happy has come over from, well, from New York via Canada, via New York, via like Newfoundland, Newfoundland, with her banjo and her amazing accompanist, Ben. This is Kaya Keita, our artist for tonight.
Someone who hasn't only listened to birds but learned to respond to them is folk singer and nature activist Sam Lee. He's also the founder of Singing with Nightingales, a work of immersive theatre staged by nature, told by humans and outshone by a very special bird.
Twelve years ago, I came here to do a little Radio 4 documentary honouring the 90th anniversary of Beatrice Harrison in 1924 and the BBC doing a duet with the Nightingale. And in honouring of that historic moment, I brought my musicians from my band and we started playing with the Nightingale in the dark, a little bit like the way she had played.
But I wasn't prepared for the response, the way the Nightingale started to sing in accordance within key, in this kind of co-responsive, playful way. And I knew instantly this was an extraordinary phenomenon. I needed to bring people to come and experience this. My passion for nature and my passion for music suddenly came into beautiful synergy.
So for 11 years since, I've been welcoming participants into these woods here in Barkham in Sussex. And we do a whole immersion of leading people not just into the dark to hear the nightingale, but into reality. what it's like to be in the realm of the nightingale, the mythic, poetic role this bird has played in our and many other cultures throughout time.
It is quite out of this world and I think the experience for the participants is quite a threshold one. It's about stepping into the unknown, walking in the darkness without light, sitting in close proximity to a wild and possibly soon to be extinct in this country rare species that has a song that just rinses through you.
And it brings up such an amazing range of emotions and reflections and possibilities, ways of feeling things that we don't often have the space or afford ourselves the space to really tune into. What does grief feel like? this strange relationship with the natural world, this sort of broken relationship.
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Chapter 4: What challenges are nightingales currently facing in the wild?
And I think that's, for me, the big hope, is that what we're creating is empowering change-makers, people to come out of this and feel that carrying the mantle to be influencers in the good way and caretakers.
This one is called Camp a Little While in the Wilderness. It's quite apropos. So it just goes... And I would love for you to sing this with me. It goes... You'll pick it up. We'll camp a little while in the wilderness In the wilderness, in the wilderness We'll camp a little while in the wilderness And we'll all journey home We'll all journey home So that's basically how it goes.
Please pick it up where you're comfortable. We'll camp a little while in the wilderness In the wilderness, in the wilderness We'll camp a little while in the wilderness Then we'll all journey home We'll all journey home We'll all journey home We'll camp a little while in the wilderness Then we'll all journey home Mothers, are you ready?
How many variations of the song have you heard?
I mean, these birds, if you get an old male, the nightingale's got up to 1,200 different sounds. And they're improvising on all those gestures and motifs. So sometimes it can be an absolute spectacle of different sounds. Tonight we're going to go and hear a new bird that's just landed late in the season. So who knows what he's got. Maybe he's a young one, didn't have a territory.
Maybe he's not quite so... you know, brilliant by 90 girl standards. For me, every bird is beautiful and it's got their own character and will have their own relationship with the musicians. And this is the important, how does the bird connect him with us musicians?
And this is the bit that's like, it's on a whole other level of how some musicians and the bird find this, it's like a love affair, this musical dance, this duet. and every musician has a different experience.
Is there any knowledge as to what the Nightingale is doing in relation to the musician? Is it a territorial thing? Is it an actual musical duet in the sense that I am hearing music, I am then responding vocally to that with something? What is it?
It's the big question, and the short answer is I don't know. Of course I wouldn't be doing this if I had any inkling, and we've researched this a lot, is this affecting the birds in a negative way? And we know we've only had an increase in population here, so just to allay fears that this might be affecting them in a sensitive mating time.
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Chapter 5: How does music intertwine with nature during the event?
They sit by motorways, they sit in the centre of Berlin by traffic lights. These are birds that are very comfortable with humans and in fact have an ancient history of being in close proximity and making music with them. Humans have been playing with nightingales for thousands of years, I now find out.
But for me, there isn't a perfect human word in our language referring to our behaviours and emotions that can capture actually what's really happening. The word play is there. They don't need to sing all night. It's an expensive gesture. They're doing it because they love being expressive, beautiful, daring, strange things that... need to make art.
What that need is in us, I'll never quite know and why we do it. But when they hear humans, they just, you can hear how they just start to respond and acknowledge us. It's not competitive, it's not rejectionary, it's just joy. So this is a bit of kind of couples therapy in some ways for us in nature, of holding Nightingale close to us as we learn to let go of the things we love.
This is a practice I think we need, facing the future that we are going to inherit.
Once widespread, nightingales are now much less common, a sad trend that makes hearing one sing all the more special. Numbers have dropped dramatically over the last 50 years, down around 80 to 90%. There are now only a few thousand breeding males left, Loss of their favoured scrub and coppiced woodland, along with degradation of breeding and wintering sites, are all major factors.
Because of this steep decline, nightingales are now on the UK red list, a stark reminder of just how fragile our bird populations really are.
Nightingales are clinging on in this country in numbers around five and a half thousand pairs only left. It's an absolute fraction of what we once had and that number is also rapidly declining such that at rates of loss we suspect that I will hear the last nightingale in my lifetime. 30, 40 years we might have left with them.
We talk about the poly crisis, but the poly crisis for nightingales is enormous of the issues that they're facing, both from deer populations just eating back their habitat, destroying so much of the new growth they depend on to live in, to intensive agriculture, insecticide, pesticide use, destroying so much of their food source.
Rapid housing developments and planning projects, including a giant theme park in Kent on one of their most important breeding grounds, they have absolutely no protection. And worst of all, that is combined with the fact that sub-Saharan Africa, where they also depend on half the year to feed, to make the journey back here again to breed, is being slammed by global heating right now.
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Chapter 6: What emotions arise from the experience of listening to nightingales?
Why are we out here in the cold with our instruments and our voices to go and listen to a species at their most sublime in their songful moment? And for me, My answer to that is that this is work of firstly of gratitude, of thanks for such an important character. He's been part of our ancient kinship with the natural world. This has been one of the most important builders of allegiance.
The threads of connection that we have to nature has been held in that songful, artful way through the bird. But also in many ways, this is palliative care. This is us. saying farewell, standing by the bedside of this beloved more-than-human friend, to say, we care, we love you, and we shall remember.
But they, of course, are the canary in the coal mine, and what happens to nightingales happens to us, and the problem is not just for them, it's much more ecosystem-wide. because the collapse is happening around us everywhere, and Britain especially. This is an oasis we're in here. We are surrounded in this country by a majority of barren monoculture, of green concrete, of an ecological desert.
Many of us aren't aware, but we are the seventh most nature-depleted country in the world, and it's getting worse.
That's a lot. in your lifetime you may you know you may not hear that song again and just I don't know it frightens me when I hear the statistics of like it's in its billions you know for somebody who's so inspired by the sound of birds to to slowly hear less of them and experience more of the silence, it's saddening. It really, it saddens me. I can't, you know, I can't lie.
It does, it's saddening. It's ironic that, you know, we're talking about this thing around birds in the sky, and all as we're shooting this piece, we're interrupted by the sounds of airplanes. And that is the dominant soundscape. Every 35 minutes, there's another plane, there's more planes. And actually, those kind of winged things in the sky are replacing the natural winged things in the sky.
What makes you think that you deserve any peace? Or that nature should be gentle. Do not impose your human laws. Oh, pray upon my mantle. The women knelt by their last sheep.
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Chapter 7: How do nightingales symbolize our relationship with nature?
and they cried for all their losses and the shadow came and the shadow went as often as they ought to and the shadow came and the shadow
So that was pretty incredible. Sat around the fire. listening to songs, listening to stories. Beautiful set there from Kaya. And now we're getting ready to go into the woods. We're going to move away from probably all light and it's going to go into pitch darkness as we follow the trail towards Nightingales. And yeah, it's all about your ears. And that's the most important bit now.
It's time to listen. This is my happy place. This is definitely my happy place. The microphones are on. I've got my headphones on. I can turn up the volume. And then I'm completely absorbed into another world. But at the same time, participating in it.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. little birdies to stay here
And I've got a long time to be home.
You know I'd rather be in some dark hovel where the sun, she
Then for you to be
Thank you, everybody.
It was really unbelievably magical. We walked in darkness, in like almost absolute darkness. It was really beautiful hearing these different voices along with this constant sound and sounds of the nightingale. There's trills, short, sharp staccato rhythms. Yeah, it was a surreal experience. It's left me with the sound of the nightingale representing an alarm call.
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Chapter 8: What actions can listeners take to protect nightingales and their habitat?
And I mean that in a really wide context in terms of where we are climatically, politically. And the sound itself was almost like a beacon that we were sort of like pulled towards. And then when we got there, there was a strength of nature that was a kind of a hope that...
that there is a power and a strength in nature of endurance to carry on, to keep going, to keep transforming, to keep moving, to keep happening, to keep evolving. And people will come and go, but nature will endure.
For me, it's not just about joy and whimsy and celebration that that's part of it. It's more than that, it's a reckoning with what we all as a species have to face. Hope is having a plan and rolling up your sleeves and getting to it. And there is so much that we can do. I love this idea of the awe print.
I'm captivated by this idea that actually, by having moments of awe and wonder, bringing the enchantment of nature into our lives, they leave their muddy footprints, their awe prints, as I call them. And they are what give us a sense of purpose. They're what help us to adore the land, to love the land, because without being able to love the land, we cannot begin to protect nature.
Obviously we are part of nature, but we're also beholden. We need nature, not just for our sustenance, but our sense of soul and integrity, our senses of identity and place within the ecosystem. We cannot exist beyond or separate.
That's all for this episode. Thanks for coming along with us today and I'll see you in a fortnight birdies. If you love bird watching, why not join the flock, our Get Birding Members Club. Enjoy exclusive content, the latest birding news, ad-free episodes and access to community chat rooms to share tips, spots and more with birdies around the world. Go to our website, getbird.ing
Get Birding was produced by Hannah Walker-Brown. The executive producer is Jane Gerber. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This is a Get Birding production in collaboration with Forest Holidays.
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