Singing warblers
IN late April you will have been listening to Common Chiffchaff for a month or more, while the local Willow Warblers (if you have them) will be in full swing. Go – if you have one close by – to a decent patch of oak or beech wood, or maybe even a stand of larch, and listen.
You need trees with a tall, continuous canopy but little or no ground layer, just a few sweeping
branches coming close to the ground. In among these there just might be a Wood Warbler singing. The song is simple: a short, hesitant, metallic ticking that firms up into a higher, silvery trill. Every four or five repetitions the warbler will switch to a soft, sad seeuw seeuw seeuw.
Don’t be tempted to misidentify a bright, silent Willow Warbler with clean underparts, pale legs and a pale bill. A real Wood Warbler has bright white underparts, but the contrasting yellow face and breast can be much weaker than you might expect. The head will always show a wider, greener eyestripe and a wider, yellower superciliary stripe than Willow Warbler. Its wings are more clearly lined, black-brown with yellow-green fringes, and the long wing-tips are often slightly drooped beside the wide, rather wedge-shaped rear body and tail.
So, Wood Warbler should look recognisably different – but it is that characteristic song that always gives it away. Rob Hume