{"id":344,"date":"2014-04-13T20:19:10","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T20:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=344"},"modified":"2014-05-01T16:59:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T16:59:25","slug":"would-you-like-to-hear-a-nightingale-if-so-please-help-this-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=344","title":{"rendered":"Would You Like to Hear a Nightingale ? If so, please help this Petition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slowly, year on year, Britain has been losing its Nightingales but as so few of us ever hear them, very few people will have noticed. \u00a0The BBC once brought the song of the Nightingale to the nation, with its first Outside Broadcast.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the text of my petition to try and enlist the help of the BBC to once again bring Nightingale song into every home, and hopefully lend support to the efforts to conserve these fabled songsters<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Sign the petition here: https:\/\/you.38degrees.org.uk\/petitions\/broadcast-nightingales-live-on-bbc-radio-this-may-18th<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Nightingale<\/a><\/p>\n

Broadcast Nightingales live on BBC radio this May 18th<\/b><\/p>\n

TO THE BBC<\/p>\n

Dear BBC<\/p>\n

At midnight on 18th May 1924 a million people tuned in to BBC radio to hear your first ever live Outside Broadcast: of a Nightingale singing in a Surrey wood as cellist Beatrice Harrison played music.\u00a0 50,000 people were so moved that they wrote letters in response.\u00a0 It became an annual BBC tradition – until World War II in 1942.<\/p>\n

We ask you to re-start these broadcasts and re-connect people all over Britain with the song of the Nightingale, live, this May 18th.\u00a0 This and many of other songbirds are in steep decline: by broadcasting the song of the Nightingale you will enrich our lives, and may inspire us to keep a place for Nightingales in the lives of our children, and theirs.<\/p>\n

Why It Matters<\/b><\/p>\n

Anyone who has ever heard the song of a Nightingale, knows the extraordinary heart-lifting, soul-penetrating power of the voice of this bird.<\/p>\n

\"Keats<\/a><\/p>\n

Once they were commonplace: Keats wrote ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ while listening to one<\/a> in his Hampstead garden.\u00a0 As a teenager growing up in Ruislip in the London suburbs, I heard just one signing Nightingale, despite the large ancient woodlands there<\/a>, yet I was told that during WW II, they were common enough that people living next to the woods complained about the noise of singing Nightingales keeping them awake at night.<\/p>\n

Fewer and fewer people now get to ever hear the song of a real live Nightingale.\u00a0 They have declined 55% just since 1995<\/a>.\u00a0 Why ?\u00a0 It is a mystery almost as deep as how it is that the song of the Nightingale mainlines straight to our hearts.\u00a0 But we do have some idea.<\/p>\n

Back in 1942, the BBC’s hugely popular ‘Midnight Nightingale Broadcasts’ were brought to an abrupt end when an engineer realized that they were about to broadcast the background sound of RAF bombers massing overhead, before setting off to strike Germany. So he pulled the plug<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today the Nightingale is under a very different sort of threat<\/a>: researchers think a combination of climate change and farm development in its African wintering grounds, the destruction of nesting habitat by introduced Muntjac deer in this country, poor woodland management and pesticides, may all play a part.<\/p>\n

The Nightingale is but one of many songbirds<\/a>, which for similar reasons, are rapidly vanishing from our countryside, our urban green sanctuaries and suburban woods, and thus from our lives.\u00a0 It seems that developers and politicians do not care enough to keep even the clearest most obvious threats at bay – for example at Lodge Hill in Kent<\/a>, Britain’s only woodland specifically designated as a valued breeding site for Nightingales, over 80 singing Nightingales<\/a> are threatened with development for new houses.<\/p>\n

If our society cannot save the Nightingale, it cannot save very much of what makes life really worth living.\u00a0 Yet as David Attenborough has said, “No one will protect what they don\u2019t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced”.<\/p>\n

You can hear the evocative, liquid song of that lone, long-dead Nightingale from 1942, with the drone of bombers in the background, here<\/a>.\u00a0 It was recorded but never broadcast.\u00a0 Now it’s time for the BBC to re-start the tradition, not to run a campaign but to enrich our quality of life, to at least give its millions of listeners the chance to hear a real, live Nightingale signing, if only once a year.<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beatrice Harrison<\/a> and her sister lived at Foyle Riding near Oxted in the 1920s.\u00a0 Their home became famous for the Nightingales and thousands of people traveled from London to visit and listen to them singing. \u00a0After the sisters moved, the BBC continued the broadcasts until 1942.\u00a0 Beatrice<\/a> was a friend of composers such as Delius and Elgar.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what has happened to their home but it appears that the woodland around it may have been built on for housing.<\/p>\n

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) conducts surveys<\/a> of Nightingales. \u00a0\u00a0BTO experiments<\/a> have shown that deer browsing \u2013 ie eating the low vegetation that Nightingales need to nest in \u2013 have a negative effect. \u00a0\u00a0The BTO\u2019s 2012 survey<\/a> estimated that there were 3300 pairs in the whole country \u2013 about one Nightingale for every 9,000 people.\u00a0 The BTO says \u201cthe Nightingale is in danger of being lost as a UK breeding bird\u201d and showed that it declined by over 50%<\/a> between 1995 and 2008.<\/p>\n

Nightingales are small Rufus brown birds a bit larger than a robin \u2013 not much to look at and hard to see but with an amazing song<\/a>.\u00a0 The sing in the day or at night but the night-time singing makes the biggest impression.\u00a0 May is regarded as the best month to hear them.<\/p>\n

The RSPB<\/a>, Kent Wildlife Trust<\/a> and others<\/a> have been campaigning to save the woodlands of Lodge Hill in Kent from being destroyed for new housing. \u00a01.3% of the UK Nightingale population lives at Lodge Hill.<\/p>\n

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, <\/i><\/p>\n

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: <\/i><\/p>\n

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But being too happy in thine happiness,\u2014 <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In some melodious plot <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Singest of summer in full-throated ease. <\/i><\/p>\n

Part of \u2018Ode to a Nightingale\u2019 by \u00a0John Keats: full poem here<\/a><\/p>\n

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day First heard before the shallow cuckoo’s bill, Portend success in love.<\/i><\/p>\n

John Milton Quotes<\/a> , Source: ‘<\/em><\/b>Sonnet–To the Nightingale’<\/em><\/cite><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Nightingale<\/a><\/cite><\/p>\n

David Attenborough presented the Nightingale on BBC Tweet of the Day<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slowly, year on year, Britain has been losing its Nightingales but as so few of us ever hear them, very few people will have noticed. \u00a0The BBC once brought the song of the Nightingale to the nation, with its first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}