Looking for Dartford Warblers and Wood Larks at Thursley Common in Surrey.

      

Dartford Warbler

This Wednesday just gone I planned  to meet Jeremy at dawn in the Wyre forest to look for Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers. On Tuesday the forecast was for fog for the first couple of hours so, as this is exactly when these diminutive little  Woodpeckers are most active,  we decided to postpone the trip. Instead I decided to pay a visit to Thursley Common in Surrey which is normally a top spot for Dartford Warblers and Wood Larks in early spring. The forecast for Thursley was also mist and fog for the first couple of hours so I planned to arrive at 10:00.

 

Dawn broke on Wednesday in Pirton to reveal a lovely bright early spring day – typical! The weather did deteriorate to heavy fog as I drove down the M5 so perhaps it was also foggy in the forest. The forecast for Thursley was mist clearing to light cloud but in fact it was again a lovely sunny spring day right up to sunset. My wife always laughs when I check the forecast for birding  - she says wait and look out of the window and she is 100% right!

 

Wood Larks obey the hutchins rule of bird song and plumage, i.e. the beauty of the song is inversely proportional to the beauty of the plumage. In other words, brown “dull” birds tend to have the loveliest song. It could be that, as a testosterone  fuelled spring male bird, you either want to have the brightest plumage or the loveliest voice to convince the ladies that you are the man or their dreams! I’m not sure, however, that this makes evolutionary sense as if you had both you would surely be kingpin!

 

Anyway after that waffle what I really need to tell you is that the Woodlark, at least in my humble opinion, has some of the most beautiful song of any UK songbird. In early spring they will often sing from a favourite perch or  perform as they rise up with a very typical fluttery sort of flight. Thursley common retains good numbers of this supreme songster and no spring for me is complete without hearing them sing at least once. After a  short walk from the car park onto the common they were immediately very obvious. There certainly was a lot of early spring argy bargy going on with males trying to out sing each other as they chased around the common. I find it very hard to describe the song but Colins describes it as follows…..

 

“ (The) song is one of the most attractive, consisting of pleasant and sweet but melancholy notes in series, opening hesitantly, accelerating, and falling in pitch and gaining in loudness.”

 

 I’m not sure that even does it justice but how do you describe song in words? I absolutely love Beethoven’s pastoral but I have absolutely no idea how you would describe it in words. Impossible comes to mind! Let’s just settle for the fact that it is truly beautiful and quintessential of English spring.

 

As noted above, the Woodlark is a mainly brown and pale bird with a distinctive white supercilium. Like its cousin the Skylark it also has a small crest. One very distinctive feature in flight is its almost comically small and stumpy tail which almost looks as though its had a bad experience at the barber who’s slipped with his scissors and chopped its tail off by mistake!

   

  

Mr. Wood Lark in full song

Having visited Thursley common numerous times in early spring I known where the Dartford’s normally hold territory and, true to form, both my top spots had pairs of birds on them.

 

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 usually 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.

 

I’m not sure why but on this occasion the males were much more flighty and elusive than on previous visits with hardly any of the scratchy rambling song mentioned above. I’ve had great success in photographing them here in previous springs but on this occasion they always seemed more distant and very mobile.

   

The views I hoped for from previous visits

Typical distant views I actually got!

A word of caution, it's best to try to avoid going to see Dartford’s in the breeding season. As they have 2 or even 3 broods, the breeding season is quite extended from mid April through to July. Particularly, be careful about spending long periods around nest sites, these are schedule one birds and it’s illegal to disturb them in anyway while they are nesting.

 

In the seven wonderful hours  I was on the common I was uplifted and transformed by the Woodlark song on numerous occasions, never getting bored of it and only pulling myself away with the sadness of a lovers parting as the sun set.

Until the next time my love ……...

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