I like to try and find a sunny still day in March to go looking for two heathland specialists, Dartford Warbler and Woodlark. My go to place for this is Thursley Common in Surrey, a 325 hectares National Nature Reserve featuring extensive areas of open dry heathland, peat bogs, pine, and deciduous woodlands. It is famous as the summer residence until a few years back of Colin the incredibly confiding Cuckoo. The site is extremely well managed by Nature England and is perfect for heathland specialists.
I’ve always found it a very peaceful, and in the midweek when I go at least, a comparatively quiet spot for Dartford’s. This year, however, I decided to try another site first in Berkshire which had the advantage of being 40 miles closer to home.
I spent a couple of hours at this new site for me on a sunny but cold morning this week. While there were lots of Stonechats and a few Woodlarks there I failed to either hear or see Dartford’s. To be honest, I didn’t find the experience particularly enjoyable. The site was absolutely crawling with dog walkers with many dogs roaming everywhere off lead despite lots of signs asking them to stick to the path as there were ground nesting birds present. I like to immerse myself in the peace and tranquilly of nature when I go out birding and this was far from that. Contracting myself immediately, twitches rarely fall into this category but at least you know what to expect on a mega twitch.
Come mid-morning I was thoroughly fed up and not enjoying myself so decided to drive the additional 40 miles to Thursley Common. This plan was not without jeopardy as, in my experience at least, the Dartford’s tend to be very quiet and elusive in the afternoons. As it turned out I need not have worried as I found a male singing on territory withing 10 minutes of arriving.
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.
Head on, as per the top picture, their expression always looks slightly angry to me somewhat exaggerated by their old mans shaggy grey beard!
In the 5 hours or so I was on site I found at least five singing males on territory so I’m guessing the winter survival rate has been high due to the comparatively mild if damp weather. At one point I was trying to spot a male I had seen jumping about when a heather bush next to the footpath started moving around. This was shortly followed by a male and female appearing through the heather no more than a couple of feet away from me. I’m not sure who was more surprised but they didn’t hang around for me to ask.
There were good numbers of Woodlarks also present, easily identified in flight by their almost comically short tails. Their song obeys the hutchins inverse square law whereby the plainer the bird the more beautiful the song is. I would hypothesise that this is because a plainly coloured bird has to make himself more attractive to a mate with beautiful song. The disadvantage of arriving so late was that I didn’t hear any males singing.
With my spirts well and truly lifted, thankyou Thursley, I made a move around 5 into the rush hour traffic. I’m going to stick with Thursley in the future, its much more my cup of tea!
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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