KING SINGER
It’s the Locustella warblers, though, that are more typically thought of as crepuscular singers. Birders will often listen for Grasshopper Warblers at dawn and dusk, but they’ll regularly sing at night. To have the best chance of finding a Savi’s Warbler, a night time trip to a reedbed would be a good tactic. The Savi’s dull buzz will be easier to pick up at night when the Locustella warblers are in good voice and other birds are quieter. Marsh Warblers will also sing at night but Blyth’s Reed Warbler would be the ultimate nocturnal songster to find. On their breeding grounds they don’t tend to sing at all until darkness falls. This most tuneful of warbler has been spreading westward in Europe, recently. Last year there were at least 20 spring records scattered across Britain, from London and Wales, to Yorkshire and Scotland. I have heard one singing in Britain in June, and it deserves to be on the radar, but remains very rare. Bitterns will go on booming into the night, but there are other marshland specialists to take on the night-shift: the crakes. Often choosing to sing from slightly different habitat to Bitterns, they prefer shorter, shallowly-flooded, fen vegetation, before the reeds have had a chance to close in. The Spotted Crake’s call has variously been The high-pitched reeling song of the Grasshopper Warbler sounds more like an insect than a bird The Nightingale is the champion night singer of all British birds. Sadly, its song is heard less often each year
described as sounding like a whiplash and a dripping tap (funny how a whiplash sounds nothing like a dripping tap). Either way, recordings of the call can be easily found online and it’s very distinctive. As appears the case with many of these nocturnal singers, presumably due to the lack of any visual display, persistence of song and volume are the order of the day – or indeed night. The Spotted Crake is no exception with birds being audible for up to two kilomtetres away and producing up to 90 notes a minute. Although they have declined in recent years, birds are doubtless still overlooked owing to the time of day that they advertise their presence. Scrub at the edge of a marsh in southern or eastern England might still have Nightingales. They don’t sing for much more than a month a year – blink and you miss it. Sadly, for most of us now, a special trip is required to enjoy them;