Yep, the Common Whitethroats have moved in with 3 adjacent territories along our small lane. I’m not sure what the normal area requirements are for a territory but they are certainly close enough together that the males can hear each other sing. This is contributing to how vocal and active they are as each claims to be a much better mate than their neighbour. Photographing these hyperactive little warblers is fun and almost too easy as they like to hammer out their fast and scratchy song from an exposed perch atop the bushes. I find the song has a scolding characteristic to it, perfect for telling the neighbours to shut up! Occasionally one would get so wound up by its neighbours singing that it would fly up in a hover like manner with wings beating frantically and try and our broadcast their neighbour on the wing. As they are literately just a hundred meters from our house it would be very rude not to pay them the attention they deserve so I’ve been out with the camera 3 or 4 times. Rather astonishingly, the sun has also arrived from wherever it has spent the last 6 months. It almost seems as though spring has been cancelled and we’ve move straight on to summer.
The Common Whitethroat, as the name suggest, is a common summer migrant belonging to the Sylvia genus. It is strongly migratory wintering in Africa, Arabia and Pakistan.
In total contrast to these show-offs are our ultra-sulky local Common Nightingales. Again only 15 minutes from home, and with the sun again rather mystifyingly out, I made a spontaneous decision on Wednesday evening to pay them a visit. Happily, in this particular location the habit is extremely well managed for Nightingales. In particular this means leaving the understory beneath the trees uncut. In this favourite accommodation the males almost always sing from deep in the undergrowth. So its best to set your expectations fairly low knowing you will hear them sing but probably only get glimpses of the bird.
I walked down the leafy lane where they normally are and almost immediately heard the unmistakable song of a male. It’s always a relief when you hear their song for the first time in the spring as they are in severe decline in the UK. The reasons are complex and not fully understood but our obsession with tidying up mother nature is undoubtably reducing the accommodation they seek. It's very hard to describe their unique song but it is characteristically very varied. The Collins bird bible describes it thus "powerful and melodic, varied throughout, phrases rather short (2-4 secs) consisting of tilling sounds, fluted whistles and rippling or gurgling noises". They are well camouflaged being mainly brown so It can sometimes sound as though they are us a few feet away but you still can’t see them.
At one point I hid under a small tree on the edge of the path and listen to the song slowly getting louder and louder until I saw movement right above my head. For a few moments I had an obscured view of mother nature’s supreme songster before he vanished back into the undergrowth. As the light slowly faded the Nightingale sang more and more often and I would occasionally get another brief leaf obscured view.
To prove they do exist, here’s a picture taken at this location a few years ago.
The light started to fade further so I made my way slowly back along the lane with the enchanting Nightingale song slowly fading into the background noise of the approaching night. What a fabulous way to spend a late spring evening!
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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