WINTER’S WILDLIFE The warbler that caps all others
Cuckoos get all the credit for officially announcing spring with the two-note declarations that give them their name ringing out across the countryside.
But long before newspaper letters pages are celebrating their April arrival, a less showy seasonal harbinger will have been in full cry for weeks.
What the male blackcap lacks in ostentatious plumage or extrovert behaviour is compensated by a voice stolen from the angels.
No bird deserves membership of the warbler clan quite as much. Although many species carry the name, neither reed warblers, sedge warblers nor willow warblers create the honeyed melodies of this sparrow-size chorister in a coat of grey topped with an ebony crown.
The great 19th Century nature-loving poet John Clare was so enchanted by the blackcap’s early spring offerings that he placed it on the same pedestal as our most famous songbird in one of his most beautiful verses. “While the blackcap doth his ears assail, With such a rich and such an early song,
He stops his own and thinks the nightingale…” Clare’s March Nightingale has been echoing in my ears of late as blackcaps have been providing a joyful accompaniment to birding walks yet to be blessed with cherry blossom or leaf burst.
Delighting in the rich, melancholy strains full of fluty notes left me wondering whether these birds were fresh spring arrivals from North Africa or emigres from the east that have been wintering in Britain during a time of climate change.
Since the 1960s, birdwatchers have reported increasing numbers of blackcaps hunkering down from November through to March in gardens and parks across the UK.
Our milder maritime climate and an obsession for feeding birds have created alternative blackcap migration strategies.
Rather than fraught autumn flights to the North African shores of the Mediterranean, central European birds are increasingly spending winter in our suburbs.
The advantage for these birds is that it means shorter return journeys to Poland and Germany in spring, so increasing the chances of establishing earlier and more successful nesting territories.
More Central European birds are spending winter in our suburbs