Sounds of hope in Kent as more nightingales join dawn chorus

For a few weeks after arriving from west Africa, the nightingale spends the night – and early morning – in complex song. Photograph: Ben Andrew

The dawn chorus at RSPB Northward Hill in Kent is a riot of sound: the melodic robin, the two-tone cuckoo, the whitethroat’s scratchy warble. Even the garbling geese and mooing cows from the neighbouring Thames marshes add to the symphony.