Listen up...

Quail are far from being the only species you’ll hear as often as see, and the long summer evenings (and short nights, if you’re up for some 24-hour birding), are a great time to catch up with some of them, not least because most other birds are starting to settle down for the night as dusk falls… Tawny Owl

The male’s hooting song, sometimes in response to the female’s shrill

‘ kee-wick’ call (though both sexes make this call), is your most likely indicator that this strictly nocturnal predator is around, even though they’re both numerous and widespread – though they prefer mature woodland, they’ll also use parks and gardens, even in cities. But no matter how close the sound is, they tend to sit tight and remain hidden.

3 Bittern

Although the population is expanding, this reedbed specialist is still very scarce, with fewer than 150 breeding pairs in the UK. And, except during freezing winter conditions, they rarely venture outside their reedbed homes. So, listen for the far-carrying and resonant ‘booming’ call, like a distant foghorn, or someone blowing across the top of a glass jar.

Nightjar

The heathland of East Anglia and the south of England are their main haunts, although they also like clear-felled areas in forestry plantations, and may be under-reported elsewhere. Patience is the key here – you need to wait until the last light has almost gone before they start their mechanical-sounding ‘churring’. If you wait long enough, you’ll see the flash of white wing patches of the males as they start to hawk for moths.

Cuckoo

You might get lucky and see their Sparrowhawk-like flight silhouette, and when a female Cuckoo is calling, males sometimes throw off their natural shyness. But rather than good views, you’re much more likely to hear that most familiar of birdsongs, the disyllabic ‘cuk-oo, cuk-oo’, repeated again and again from within tree cover.

Nightingale

As the season goes on, they do most of their singing at night (when they first arrive in the UK, they sing pretty much 24/7), and usually from within dense under-storey, so you’re unlikely to get a chance to appreciate their modest, rufous beauty. But the song is unmistakably loud, pure, and inventive, full of whistles, gasps, trills and (this is important), pregnant pauses.

Stone-curlew

These odd waders tend to sit very still throughout daylight, so your best chance of seeing or hearing one is at dusk, on East Anglian coastal heaths, in the East Anglian Breckland, or on Salisbury Plain. Their call is very Curlew-like (hence their name), although rather more eerie, and if you hear it, look for them scurrying between scrub and weeds in search of insect prey.

Grasshopper Warbler

Another species with a mechanical-sounding ‘song’ – their reeling is variously described as being like a freewheeling bike, or a fishing reel being played out. But hearing it is the easy bit. The birds effectively ‘throw’ their voices, and will also stay hidden in ground cover even when you’re stood virtually on top of them.

Woodcock

Easier to see than most of these, if you know a good ‘roding’ spot, where they perform their display flights. Even then, you’ll probably hear their croaking and high-pitched ‘wit’ calls long before you see them, as views may be restricted to them flashing across woodland clearings or tracks.

Corn Crake

The Nene Washes, near Peterborough, and some of the islands of Scotland’s West Coast, are the only places to hear this species these days, sadly. Their song is likened to running a credit card along the teeth of a comb, and it’s performed from within the cover of long grass, so they’re never easy to see.

Spotted Crake

And finally, another crake, this time an inhabitant of sedgy bogs and wet meadows. It’s song, a loud, repeated, whip-like ‘huitt, huitt, huitt’, is very distinctive, and is usually the only way it betrays its presence – it’s secretive in the extreme. For that reason, it’s almost certainly under-reported, though, so keep listening…