An Aquatic Warbler in Sussex

   

Aquatic Warbler

I have been suffering from a serious dose of cabin fever which, if truth be told, has left me feeling quite low. Looking after Loki’s recovery from his operation has left me pretty much grounded for a week. We initially thought that the stitched wound would take 2 weeks to heal but the recovery has been put back by the area regularly bleeding, presumably where he has knocked it  at some point, and we are in the process of getting a second opinion to see how we take this forward.

 

After taking him to the vets yet again yesterday morning, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been in the last 8 weeks, Carolyn very kindly suggested I needed some  mental therapy via birding while she looked after everything at home. My destination was a place called Upper Beeding in Sussex where a rare Aquatic Warbler had been found the previous day. Virtually all records of this attractive warbler are for one day only making them quite hard to twitch but this one had done the decent thing and stayed the night. 

 

With a forced late departure, I reckoned that I would have 5 to 6 hours of daylight when I arrived. My good friend Nick, who had visited that morning, sent me some stunning pictures he had taken of the bird  providing further motivation to visit.  After a rather boring but uneventful drive I arrived at the village church, parked up and walked over a small footbridge down to the bank of the river Adur and followed the  riverbank until I came to a small group of birders  who, as is our want, were peering intently at a river side bush.

 

The Warbler had not been seen for almost 2 hours which immediately had me worried that it had gone. As the afternoon wore on 2 hours became 4 and I became increasingly desolate at the thought that I had missed the bird, just what my mental health needed! All this changed in an instant when the bird flew out of the long grass in a field adjacent to the river and flew into the bush. It turned out that it had been in the grass all along! This sulking and elusive behaviour turned out to be very typical of the bird reminding me of the Lanceolated Warbler that I saw in Shetland last year. I could not see the bird from the path but I hopped into the field where I had a  good view of it through my bins.

 

The story of the Aquatic Warbler is a sad but all too familiar one. It is the rarest and the only internationally threatened songbird found in mainland Europe. Apart from a very small remnant population in Western Siberia, its breeding grounds are completely confined to Europe. It’s breeding habitat requirements are very particular. It requires wet sedge beds with vegetation shorter than 30 cm. Unfortunately drainage has led to a very sharp decline in numbers, and it’s now largely confined to  eastern Poland and Belarus where 70% of the world's population breeds. Once a common and widespread bird its population has now plunged to around 10,000 pairs.

 

The wintering grounds of the Aquatic Warbler were unknown for many years  but it was recently discovered that much of the European population overwinters in the Djouj National Bird Sanctuary in Senegal.

 

The adult has a heavily streaked brown back and pale underparts with variable streaking. The forehead is flattened, and the bill is strong and pointed. There is a prominent whitish supercilium and crown stripe. It could be possibly confused with a juvenile Sedge Warbler, which may  also show a crown stripe, but the marking is stronger in the Aquatic Warbler.

 

After a short period of time it flew from the bush to the opposite bank of the river where it sat out in the open on the sedge for a few minutes, the only time I had a more or less unobstructed view of this attractive and delightful member of the Acrocephalus  genus which includes the Sedge, Marsh and various Reed Warblers.

 

I was hoping for a better view to match Nick’s cracking photographs but it spent the rest of the day either in the grass field or its favourite bush limiting me to a number of flight views. Come 18:30 I left the river to make my way home in equal measure delighted and relived that this charming and rare visitor had become species number 398 on my Uk bird list. Just 2 to go to the big 400 – I wonder what they will be?

 

Footnote - My blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!