WHAT TO SPOT
Natural wonders to watch out for this week…
The coldest start to April for eight years feels a little as if it has stopped spring in its tracks. The frost has nipped the buds off magnolia and fruit trees which came alive in the mini heatwave of a week or so ago. The tulips in my garden (which at this time of the year would normally be at their glorious best) hang limp and defeated.
On several mornings over the past week, I have peered into my pond to see the luscious scoops of frogspawn encased in sheets of ice. What of the poor spring butterflies I wrote about in last week’s column? Given that this cold snap is forecast to last a few weeks yet, one presumes they have ducked back into their hibernation spots to sit out 2021 in the warmth.
But in spite of the deep chill, spring is still fighting through. No more so than in the irrepressible song of the chiffchaff which you can currently hear belting out from the treetops wherever you are.
Theirs is an onomatopoeic song and an apposite one, too, for this backwards spring: chiff chaff, chiff chaff and on it goes…
A small olive brown warbler with a pale stripe over its eye, chiffchaffs are extremely difficult to spot as they flit high up between the trees. Indeed the Latin name of the bird, phylloscopus collybita, derives from the word for leaf. Once the trees have fully come into their summer dress, the bird will become all but invisible to all but the most trained, or patient, eyes.
Come to think of it, the chiffchaff turns on its head with a glorious flourish that dour old schoolmaster saying that children
If it is rare indeed to set eyes on a chiffchaff, you will hear them all right
should be seen and not heard. For even if it is rare indeed to set eyes on a chiffchaff, you will hear them all right. At some point towards the end of March, it is as though someone has magically switched them all on.
Chiffchaffs are in fact migratory birds, over-wintering in warmer climes further south before arriving in Britain each spring to breed. Some of the birds may even travel from as far as sub-Saharan Africa – a journey all the more impressive given the tiny warbler weighs less than a one pound coin.
Once settled here they are widespread throughout the country with a population numbering several million strong and breeding in parks, woodland, scrub and gardens. Despite their preference for calling out from the highest treetops, chiffchaffs will build their nests almost at ground level in patches of nettles or brambles.
As with the majority of bird species, it is the females that do the bulk of the nest-building, using foraged feathers as insulation. The nests are so snug that the rural poet John Clare described them as “oven-made, with moss and leaves and bits of grass”.
Clare referred to the bird as a “chippichap” and marvelled at what he called its “restless melodies”. But in its seemingly simple and repetitive song is a world of mystery. It is a bird that flies thousands of miles on its stubby wings to herald the beginning of spring. And even in years such as this when winter refuses to release its grip, it is the pluckiest of survivors that remains forever unbowed.