Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Vertebrate > bird > Bird |
| Red List Status: | Vulnerable (Breeding) [VU(br)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Luscinia megarhynchos |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | Brehm, CL, 1831 |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | Stanbury et al., 2021 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Long-term non-significant decline Eng BBS (25 yr -44%, 10 yr -6%). Sample size issue |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Habitat creation needed |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | For breeding, Nightingales favour closed-canopy scrub or young woodland, with bare ground under the canopy for feeding, but also area of low thick vegetation, generally associated with secondary succession and early regeneration after coppicing. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 5. Remedial action identified |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Medium-high |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Combination - sufficient |
| Species Comments: | BBS trend becoming less robust |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Use a combination of existing data and new fieldwork to examine how to best to delivery landscape-scale resilience for Nightingale.
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 20 sites
High priority sites:
Comments:
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Deliver the ecological needs of this species by spatially targeting the creation of successional scrub mosaics to where they can have the biggest impact at a landscape scale across England.
Action targets: 6. Recovery solutions trialled
Action type: Habitat creation
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites:
Comments:
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.