FIVE TO FIND IN MAY

May is great! There are still ‘winter’ birds heading north, but most summer migrants are in and passage of scarce birds moving through is peaking. The days are long, the weather pleasant, so maximise time in the field to reap the rewards. Here are five birds to see in May.

1 QUAIL

If ever there was a British bird which is heard but not seen, it is the tiny Quail. Quails are summer visitors, appearing from May onwards, where they betray their presence in agricultural fields, by ‘singing’. The song is most frequently heard at dusk or dawn (but they will sing during the day), consisting of a well-known, far-carrying, repeated, disembodied phrase: ‘wet my lips’. This is very much a bird to tick on sound alone; be happy to hear one, even if you never see the bird itself.

2 TURTLE DOVE

If ever there was a bird which symbolises the catastrophic decline of British birds owing to modern agricultural practices, it is the beautiful Turtle Dove. The soothing purr of a Turtle Dove used to be a familiar and much loved sound of warm spring and summer days. But they have become painfully scarce, in recent years. Usually picked up first by that persistent purring, you may also see them in a soaring display flight, mainly in the southern and eastern part of the country.

3 RED-FOOTED FALCON

A breeding bird of eastern Europe and Asia, the Red-footed Falcon is quite a rare but annual visitor to the UK, occurring mainly in the spring into the summer. They are small, mainly insect-eating falcons, which combine the dashing aerial grabbing technique of a Hobby with the hovering of a Kestrel, and have a shape which is somewhere between the two. Males are dark, slaty grey, females are grey above and orange beneath. Usually found in similar areas to those favoured by Hobbies.

4 NIGHTJAR

There are nearly 5,000 pairs of Nightjar nesting in the UK, scattered across suitable heathlands, moorlands and woodlands with open clearings, glades and rides. They are, of course, nocturnal, floating on magical buoyant wings in the hunt for moths, long after the sun has set. In the gloaming, though, Nightjars start their evening routine with song and dance. Males sing a beautiful, eerie, purring, churring song (the ‘jar’ in the name) and fly around clapping their white spotted wings to impress females and see off other males. To see them, head to a known Nightjar hotspot and wait until the light has almost got too dim to see anything, let alone a thrush-sized bird floating around, looking like nothing else!

5 WILLOW TIT

The Willow Tit is a bird which has been in massive decline for some time, and is now restricted to localised areas of England and Wales. Willow Tits (especially of the British subspecies kleinschmidti) are extremely similar to Marsh Tits (which outnumber Willow Tits by more than 10 to one in this country). They are best distinguished by sound (which takes some revision), but there are subtle differences in shape and tone and bill pattern (best seen ‘frozen’ in photos rather than in the field).