Even a dull walk is worth having

Just a few thoughts from a walk around my local patch at Stanwick Lakes in east Northants yesterday morning;

• not many blackberries on the bushes this year – but lots of apples in the garden
• a few speckled wood butterflies were almost the only butterflies
• compared with just under a fortnight ago warblers were very difficult to detect  – chiffchaffs were calling and a few blackcaps were sneaking around berry-laden bushes
• small flocks of swallows whizzed up the Nene Valley
• just a single lapwing was the only wader
• in a two hour walk I scraped together just 41 bird species – fewer than usual

But if one had been going on sound alone, then the Cetti’s warbler would have seemed the commonest bird – there were lots (at least half a dozen) singing and some were singing lots.  By which,  I mean that a couple of places, both rather inadequate places for Cetti’s warblers to settle, were occupied by invisible but very vocal singing birds.  In both of these cases the bird was singing repeatedly, at up to about 7 songs per minute, when hardly another bird was uttering calls let alone songs.  And the songs of these two unseen birds were both a bit rushed and incomplete.  I wonder whether they are young males setting up territories, which would explain, perhaps, why they had the duff sites and were singing rather excitedly but badly? Maybe? I remember that my old boss the late Colin Bibby studies Cetti’s warblers so I may find the answer in his writings if I look hard enough.

But it is the variety of nature that fascinates – even on a dull day in September when summer has ended and winter has yet to begin, and the summery birds are drifting away and the wintry birds have not really arrived.  If I go back tomorrow it will be different again, and if I leave it for another two weeks then the seasons will have moved on noticeably.

 

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