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Whitethroats around Pirton and a series of unfortunate dip

         
Common Whitethroat

In terms of new birds for my UK list this year so far has been a very slow one.  My last addition, assuming its finally accepted, was the Cornish Booted Eagle way back in January. Still there’s been plenty of nice local stuff to keep me happy.

 

Hearing the first Common Whitethroat in song announces the much anticipated return on mass of our spring migrants in late April and early May. Its song is perhaps not the sweetest being fast and scratchy with an almost scolding tone but, very kindly, it tends to be sung from a prominent and exposed perch. 

 

Rather subjectively, there seem to be more Common Whitethroats in the hedges around our small village than in the last couple of years.  Where the hedgerows are uncut the Mayflower on the Blackthorn has been truly stunning this year with the bushes absolutely laden with glowing bunches of dainty white flowers. I say uncut because they tend to flower on last years growth. Is there a sadder site than a hedgerow slashed brutally almost to the ground with no  spring flowers and hence autumn berries? I really can’t get my head around where this ridiculous obsession for neat and tidy hedge rows in the countryside came from. I’m sure it’s a comparatively modern thing, I certainly don’t remember it from my childhood growing up in the countryside. 

 

Luckily there are plenty of uncut bushes in flower around us where, perhaps not by chance, Whitethroats have set up territory. It would be unbelievably  rude of me not to seize the photogenic opportunity hence provided! So I’ve been out fairly regularly with my camera to try and catch them singing in the mayflower.

 

The male has a grey head, a white throat, and a brown back, and is beige underneath. It's a summer visitor and passage migrant wintering in Africa, Arabia, and Pakistan. Like most warblers, it is insectivorous, but will also eat berries and other soft fruit.

 

In total contrast to the showy Common Whitethroat, we also have a much more sulky and somewhat scarcer Lesser Whitethroat on territory in Pirton. I often hear it’s much more melodic song coming from the scrubby  area where it has set up home. Seeing it is another issue altogether but, with patience ( which is very definitely not a virtue I’m blessed with!), I have had a couple of good views.


 


 

     
Common Whitethroat

 It would seem quite reasonable to think that the Lesser and Common Whitethroat are closely related . However, researchers have found that presence of a white throat is an unreliable morphological  marker for relationships in the Curruca family and the Common and Lesser Whitethroats are, in fact, not closely related.

      

Lesser Whitethroat

In the paddocks the first fledgling Pied Wagtails are being attended by their very capable parents. The adorable youngsters already have the wagging tail that gives them their name. No one knows for sure why wagtails wag their tail but a number of theories have been put forward including the suggestions that tail-wagging helps a bird to capture its insect prey by flushing it out; that it is used to signal social status; and that it indicates an individual's state of alertness to potential predators nearby.

 

As soon as I finished writing this blog I decided to twitch a rare Bonellis Warbler, which would be a new UK bird for me, down at Sandwich Bay in Kent. I had considered going the following day but a quick bit of research showed that spring birds are usually a one day wonder. Now this trip had a certain amount of jeopardy associated with it as rare warblers can be notoriously difficult to twitch. I once spent two days at Bempton RSPB for a 5 second glimpse of a mega rare Green Warbler. My concerns were certainly well justified as the bird disappeared 20 minutes before I arrived and was never seen again. On the return leg of my 8 hour round trip I pondered my recent bad twitching form. Of the last 5 birds I’ve tried to twitch I’ve seen 2 (Booted Eagle and White Billed Diver) and dipped 3 ( Black Scooter, Bonellis Warbler and Scoops Owl). This is much lower than my long term average success rate. I don’t believe in bad luck, I’m a firm believer that you make your own luck in life, so I thought about this a little more and realised that all three dipped birds sat in the difficult category. Rare warblers , as per the above, are notoriously difficult. The Owl was only showing very intermittently at twilight and the Scoter was miles offshore in a massive flock of Common Scoters. To make the latter even more problematic a probable hybrid with some characteristics of the Black Scooter was also in the flock leading to the suspicion  that at least some of the reports of the Black Scooter were in fact sightings of this hybrid.

 

I need a nice easy twitch next time to restore my confidence. Terek Sandpiper slap bang outside the Rushy hide at Slimbridge anyone?



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

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