UK Nature and Environment

Nightingales don’t sing much during the daytime. So when their clear, pure voices rang out from some brambles in Kent on a late spring morning, it felt as if they were campaigning for their home.

Their music has charmed writers from Keats to Oscar Wilde. But over the decades, the little brown bird has had its habitat gradually hacked away because the thick brambles it likes to nest in have little use for humans.

And now one of its most important strongholds is under threat from the Labour government’s planning and infrastructure bill. For the best part of a decade, developers have been eying up Lodge Hill in Kent, where more than 100 singing birds are known to live. The derelict army training camp, which is mostly off-limits to the public though there is a footpath through some of the woodland, is prime brownfield, a 10-minute drive from Strood, which is on the high-speed line to London.