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| Dartford Warbler |
In late winter or early spring I like to make a visit to Thursley Common in Surrey looking for two heathland specialists, namely the Dartford Warbler and Woodlark. In the summer of 2020 there was a large heathland fire at Thursley and I missed out on visiting last year because of the lockdown. I was hence a little apprehensive as to what state the common would be in.
The Dartford Warbler is, unusually for a UK warbler, largely resident. Its range runs from southern England westwards to the south of Italy. It is a small warbler with a very perky character. The adult male is a very attractive bird with grey-brown upperparts and a dull reddish-brown belly except for the centre which has a dirty white patch. It has light speckles on the throat and a red eye-ring. On a warm sunny spring day it likes to sing its scratchy rambling song from the top of a gorse bush, often with its tail held cocked at a jaunty angle. The tightly packed spikey gorse also provides it with a safe nesting place and a supply of spiders and other invertebrates to keep it nourished during the cold, short winter days.
Being a resident insectivore on the very northern end of its range in the UK makes it highly susceptible to severe winter weather. In the famously cold and snowy winter of 1962/63 it is said that its UK population dropped to just ten pairs. More recently, thankfully, their numbers have increased due to warmer winters and well managed areas of heathland. The species is classified globally as near threatened.
As an aside, I remember the blizzards of 62/63 well. Being just 8 years old I could not see over the paths cut in the deep snow on the pavement outside of my parents’ cottage in the small Wiltshire hamlet of Hindon. I remember being pretty fed up that I was one of only a very small number of children who were able to get to school for several weeks, the school being an annoyingly short walk from my parents’ house!
The Woodlark favours dry habitats with short grasses. Although it is a resident bird and can be seen all year round it is most notable in February and March when it sings its lovey melodic song either on the wing or from lookout posts. It is stripy brown, with a buff-white supercilium and a spikey crest on its head. It is similar but smaller than our more common Skylark. Perhaps the easiest way to distinguish it is by its almost comically short tail and its bouncy flight pattern. The UK breeding population is said to be just 3,000 birds.
I’ve been feeling quite down in the dumps recently so I was very much looking forward to an uplifting day out birding. I find it really hard to comprehend that we humans are all the same species. The atrocities Russia are committing daily in the Ukraine are almost unbelievable and leave me in a state of despair for the future of the human race. What kind of planet are we bequeathing to our grandchildren? I’m not a religious man but part of me hopes there is a hell for the vile perpetrators of these crimes against humanity to rot in for all eternity.
Woodlarks are most vocal during the first couple of hours of daylight so I arrived early at the empty moat carpark and walked out onto the heathland. A little tip, if you go to Thursley, avoid the weekends if you can as it gets very busy and the car park is usually full. My spirits were immediately lifted when I heard the delightful song of a Woodlark. What Woodlarks lack in appearance, I would describe them as rather dull brown birders birds, they more than make up for with their sweet spring melody. I watched enchanted as a male sang from the top of a small fir tree before taking to the wing and continuing its serenade as it flew upwards with its characteristic undulating flight. Very subjectively, the Woodlarks seem to have fared well since my last visit with good numbers of singing males and pairs of birds acrobatically chasing each other. I’m unsure as to whether these were marital pairs or competing males.
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| Woodlark |
After an hour or so I made my way to a location where there have previously been two or three Dartford Warbler territories. My heart sunk when I saw the whole area had been ravaged by fire and the gorse had been burnt to the ground. The gorse, however, was regenerating from the base of the old burnt stems but the new growth was only a foot or two high. I need not have worried though as, much to my surprise, I immediately heard the scratchy rambling song of a male bird. The Dartford Warbler is in many ways the inverse opposite of the Woodlark, a beautiful looking bird with an almost annoying discorded song. I would liken it to someone scratching an old vinyl record. There were two or maybe three territories along the path so I sat down at a respectful distance and quietly watched and photographed the singing males. There are two big advantages here of my new Cannon camera. Firstly, it is silent without the disturbing machine gun rattle of my old IDX. Secondly, the high pixel count of the sensor enables astonishingly large crops without loss of image quality. I had been sitting quietly for a while when the inevitable happened. I heard the T.Rex like thump thump of someone approaching followed by “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT MATE” so loud it almost broke my hearing aids! I told him rather curtly that I had been watching the bird that had just flown over his head before disappearing over the horizon! It was time to leave!
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| Fire damage |
The arrival of spring brings many benefits, both spiritual and physical, to me. My other main hobby of gardening starts again in earnest. The first early potatoes were planted last week promising the unrivalled tase of new potatoes cooked within minutes of being harvested in ten weeks’ time. I’ve spent a lot of time this winter trying to condition our heavy clay soil in the veg garden. In excess of 100 barrows of well-rotted horse manure have been rotavated in along with the first batch of my home made compost. The greenhouse is full to the rafters with last year’s hanging basket cuttings and assorted seedings. The trailing Lobelia were germinated in the propagator a month ago and the tiny delicate seedlings have been transplanted in pots to grow on. I like to sequence the planting of my tomatoes to prolong the harvest and the first plants are growing on strongly in pots. I’ve manged to get reasonably germination from pelleted trailing petunia seeds this year after learning the trick of covering them with clingfilm until they germinate in the propagator. Broad beans and peas have been pot sown in the greenhouse as experience has taught me that sowing them directly is an expensive way of feeding the local mice!
p.s - just seen and heard the first returning Chiffchaff by our lake, same place and time as last year, and Carol our resident Collared Dove has rebuilt her nest in our stables and is sitting on eggs again - spring is here 😀😀😀
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