Tim Melling – Blyth’s Reed Warbler

Tim writes: I know it’s not the prettiest of birds but this might be the start of a colonisation of Britain by Blyth’s Reed Warbler.  It was once considered to be an extreme rarity in Britain, only really identifiable in the hand by measurement of its short wing. It was first recorded on Fair Isle in September 1910, then fewer than 10 in total to 1950.  Between 1950 and 1980 they were less than annual. But bird books have become better, and birdwatchers have become more experienced, so now these rare warblers have been turning up more than annually.  There were around two per year in the 1990s increasing to four per year in the noughties.  But this year has seen an incredible 35 singing males in Britain, including this one at Far Ings nature reserve in Lincolnshire.  Males draw attention to themselves by their beautiful mimetic song, so who knows how many silent females there are?  You can hear this bird’s mimetic song on YouTube here:

This Blyth’s Reed Warbler was first found at Far Ings Nature Reserve on 7th June.  Leaving it for 10 days meant there were only a handful of people admiring him when I arrived to hear him sing his beautiful song.  Its scientific name is Acrocephalus dumetorum.  Acrocephalus refers to the peaked crown in the Reed Warbler family, while dumetorum means “of the thickets”.  And this one certainly preferred to sing from the Hawthorn and Rose Bushes and only occasionally sang from reeds. 

Blyth’s Reed Warbler was first described by Edward Blyth in 1849 from specimens taken on their wintering grounds in India.  One of the rules of nomenclature is that you cannot commemorate yourself so it was Henry Dresser who bestowed the vernacular name Blyth’s Reed Warbler upon it.  Blyth named it Acrocephalus dumetorum which translates as highest head (Acrocephalus – because of the peaked crown of this genus) and “of the thickets” (dumetorum) from its habitat.  Blyth’s Reed Warbler is typically a bird of scrub along rivers rather than reeds, though the Lincolnshire bird sometimes sang from reeds as it is doing here.

Edward Blyth was born in London on 23 December 1810. He left school at 15 to study chemistry but was distracted by his interest in natural history. He had a small inheritance (£150) which he used to buy a druggist’s store in Tooting, but would often rise at 3am to pursue his interests before work.  When he was just 24 he described the British race of Yellow Wagtail (flavissima) in 1834, which is why this race has the type locality of Tooting.  He also published work on Bearded Tits, Cuckoos, Red-backed Shrikes and Carrion Crows.  His business in Tooting failed and for a while he became Curator of the Ornithological Society of London.  But he was advised to find work in a warmer climate because of deteriorating health.  He accepted the post of Curator of the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1841.  Then for the next 20 years he devoted his life to studying the natural history of British India. His poor health meant that he did not do much field work himself but described the specimens collected by others in this area, such as Hume, Swinhoe and Tickell.  He returned to England in 1861 and continued producing numerous papers on ornithology and corresponding with eminent scientists such as Charles Darwin, who acknowledged Blyth in the Origin of Species.  He died in 1873 a few days after his 63rd birthday but his name lives on with Blyth’s Reed Warbler plus eighteen other birds, 6 bird subspecies, a genus of woodpeckers (Blythipicus), 5 mammals, 2 reptiles and an amphibian.  Not a bad legacy by anyone’s standards.

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