Bird watch: the whitethroat, plus our free seeds
Then... AG in 1959 and Now... AG in 2020
A SPRING visitor to our gardens, the whitethroat is a very agile, cheery bird with brown upper parts, greyish-white below and a patch of pure-white feathers on the throat, which give the bird its name. It reaches this country in April, the sexes generally travelling separately, but they are not here long before they meet, and by mid-May most white-throats have paired.
Their nest is a rather flimsy arrangement of a few interwoven grass stalks placed in hedgerow herbage or any other dense vegetation.
For three years in succession a pair (presumably the same two birds) have nested in a Lonicera nitida bush in my garden, but I am obliged to curb my curiosity about what’s going on because know them to be of ‘touchy’ disposition and to resent human intrusion into their domestic bliss. Their streaked greyish-white eggs seldom exceed five in number.
Insects constitute their diet and so white-throats are to be encouraged in cultivated areas.
B Melville Nicholas
WHITETHROATS are members of the warbler clan and around the same size as a great tit, which makes their annual pilgrimage to our shores all the way from Africa so very impressive.
They tend not to favour urban areas, seeking more rural places instead. Having said that, we live on the edge of a town and we usually see one or two about the garden each spring.
During the summer months they can be found almost anywhere in the UK, excepting truly mountainous areas of Scotland and Wales and in the far south-west of Ireland.
Males generally arrive in this country around 10 days before the females and do most of the housebuilding, constructing several nests in different locations and then inviting their mate to choose her favourite location.
They head back off to sunnier climes in October, having fattened up on insects to fuel the long flight south.
Ruth Hayes