Moths sorted at 5am, then breakfast, a bit of work, and a nice drive, with a 7-8 Crane flyover, then up to RSPB Titchwell, we got there before it “opened”. We saw Spotted Flycatcher, Spoffle, within minutes of getting out of the car. Other highlights included my first Little Tern, a couple of Spoonbills, loads of Avocet, and some feeding Turtle Doves. Lots of flypasts from Marsh Harriers and some Hobbies.
Spotted Flycatcher affectionately known as a Spotfly or a SpoffleRecord shot of the Little Tern, definitely a much smaller bird than the Common Terns that were on the reserve, yellow bill can just be discernedShot of a Little Tern diving, North Norfolk, July 2019A couple of argumentative Spoonbill was showing well at Titchwell. It’s likely that this species will establish and breed at the east end of the reserve soon. There are at least 20-30 seen there and the footpath is closed, presumably for this reason
A couple of hours circular walk around the Over side of RSPB Ouse Fen in Cambridgeshire today; almost 6km, about 9000 steps (for what that’s worth), according to the fitness app on my phone.
First sighting was a Hare dashing away as I got out of the car. Then, there were countless Reed Warblers to be heard jazzily kvetching among the reeds along with the less chaotic calls of the Reed Buntings, which sound like Yellowhammers that have been given the wrong musical score. An occasional Bittern boom interrupted the dialogue and one of those swooped very close flying across the river at Brownshill Staunch just I’d reached that point on the walk. A Pied Wagtail hopped and wagged its way along the railings there as I was heading back. No butterflies sighted at this point.
Back on the main part of the reserve, at least a couple of dozen Hobbies were making a flap about hunting and eating insects on the wing, some high, some low-flying. A couple of Great White Egrets lazily took to the air and different points and times and both settled back down not a few dozen metres from where they started, they must have had a reason.
In the shrubby tree area along the edge of the new footpath/bridleway there was even more birdsong – numerous Garden Warblers, Common Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Blackcap, Robin, Sedge Warbler, Wren, Great Tit, Chiffchaff, and distant corvids and Coots, and every, invisible Cetti’s Warblers (I heard half a dozen, but only saw the one as it darted from tree to tree). What’s a warbler, anyway?
Sitting up on the bench on the mound overlooking the southern part of the reserve, I could hear a Cuckoo and caught sight of it perched in a short tree a couple of hundred metres away. Far too far for a decent photo with all the heat haze on a sunny day like today. A second was calling from further along the canal towards the car park. Not far off, a Grey Heron shed its grey load as I stood up to head back to the car park and a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly hove into view ahead of me, took quick for a snapshot. Once back at the car park, I dictated this article into my phone to save on typing and as I was doing that watched a Cattle Egret come up from the cows and calves I’d circled when I first got here. The bird itself circled and landed in almost exactly the same spot that a scavenging Marsh Harrier had come down, having hovered briefly above the spot.
Among the other songs and calls, the incessant groans of Wood Pigeon and a Green Woodpecker laughing, or yaffling, at me as it undulates out of sight and out of reach of the camera. A couple of Yellowhammer, dashed from the tree near the car to another a few feet away as I clicked the key and unlocked the car, and a Whitethroat made the same panicky dash.
The wind through the trees, the babbling of fish and diving birds in the water, the constant songs and calls of all the other aves, seems curious to pass a young fellow wearing all-enclosing, noise-cancelling headphones as he walked past me with a curt nod. What could possibly be on his playlist that’s more worthy than a dozen warblers and a yaffle?
My playlist for the morning had 38 birds…there were probably others I didn’t quite notice or note.
Bittern
Blackcap
Black-headed Gull
Blackbird
Buzzard
Carrion Crow
Cattle Egret
Cetti’s Warbler
Chiffchaff
Collared Dove
Coot
Cuckoo
Garden Warbler
Goldfinch
Great Crested Grebe
Great White Egret
Green Woodpecker
Greylag Goose
Grey Heron
Hobby
Kestrel
Lapwing
Lesser Whitethroat
Linnet
Little Egret
Mallard
Marsh Harrier
Magpie
Mute Swan
Pied Wagtail
Reed Bunting
Reed Warbler
Robin
Rook
Sedge Warbler
Whitethroat
Wren
Yellowhammer
The Dartford Warbler doesn’t warble and has little to do with Dartford. It’s ostensibly a bird native to the warmer parts of Europe and North Africa, but there are pockets living and breeding in Southern England and East Anglia. They are, however, very vulnerable to cold winters and don’t tend to thrive or even survive proper winters like those of the early 1960s. The Suffolk coast at NT Dunwich and RSPB Minsmere is probably about as far north as you will see them in the UK, but that will inevitably change with global warming and given suitable heathland habitat these birds will likely extend their range further north, unless stymied by a particularly bleak winter.
Dartford Warbler perched high on a shrub
The term warbler is a generic term for this sort of bird, but there are dozens of different types of warbler and lots of genus and most of them don’t warble at all. The Dartford of its name comes from the place where the first record specimen was shot and stuffed for posterity (it’s what the early naturalists did, see also netting and pinning insects).
Dartford Warbler tucked away in a tree
The Dartford Warbler, Curruca undata, is in the same genus as the Lesser Whitethroat (also a warbler) and they both sit in the bird family known as the Sylviidae, which includes the Blackcap, the Whitethroat, and the Garden Warbler, all of which we see in the UK.
Dartford Warbler
We were on Westleton Heath, Suffolk, because the usual patch Dunwich Heath was inaccessible. We counted ten Dartfords on a short walk around the heath. Saw none later in the day at Dunwich.
Dartford Warbler on gorse bush with bill full of spider
We are lucky enough to have an unusual return visitor to RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith) – a male Great Reed Warbler, Acrocephalus arundinaceus. UPDATE: Not seen nor heard since 3rd June 2025.
Great Reed Warbler peeking out from the reeds
This largest of the European warblers has turned up after over-wintering in sub-Saharan Africa, we assume, and landed in basically the same reedbed as he spent his time last summer. The species breeds across mainland Europe. I think there are a couple of dozen that end up in the UK each summer, but they’re spread far and wide, with almost no chance of meeting despite the males’ loud insistent song. I’ve added my recording of the bird’s song to Xeno-Canto.
There were a lot of birders trying to get photos of the GRW and one image I saw had him side-by-side with the much, much smaller Sedge Warbler. He is big! Some of the birders were suggesting this species is the size of a Common Starling…well…it might seem like that, but the measurements don’t quite stack up.
Great Reed Warbler, never once looked at the camera while singing, whole time I was watching him
The biggest recorded GRW is a little bit smaller than the smallest Starling at least by wingspan. There’s some overlap between species in terms of length from the tip of its bill to the tip of its tail, but look at the difference in what they weigh! Here are the numbers:
Great Reed Warbler – 16–21 cm long, 25-30 cm wingspan, weighs 22 to 38 g
Common Starling – 19–23 cm long, 31–44 cm wingspan, weighs 58 to 101 g.
Hard to get a non-reed shot of the Great Reed Warbler
It’s almost four years since Swift expert Dick Newell built some large-scale nestboxes for our parish amenities, namely Village Hall and Sports Pavilion. You will recall we had our local retained firefighters to hand to install them. The swifts have not yet taken to these nesting sites, although 2025 may well be the year they do. Lots of locals with boxes on their houses have seen swifts investigating over the last few days.
Flying Common Swift, Apus apus
On the evening of the 29th April, I spotted the first two Swifts over our house. Always wonderful to know some have arrived safely from their winter homes in sub-Saharan Africa. This species needs our help though, too many natural nesting sites are being grubbed out for housing development and rarely a thought given to installing nest bricks in the houses at minimal inconvenience or cost. Without swift action, these beautiful migrant visitors to our shores may disappear from the summerscape altogether. Numbers have halved in the last thirty years!
Meanwhile, I was thinking about their arrival dates. These have usually been late April, we have good records going back to 1907 that corroborate this. Local birder Ian E shared his first sighting dates for the village for the last few years: 26/4/25, 27/4/24, 28/4/23, 30/4/22, 25/4/21. Their arrival times are remarkably consistent over this period and for several decades before. So, is climate change having no effect? However, the very first swift seen in Cambridgeshire this year was 16th April at RSPB Fen Drayton.
Well, of course in their wintering grounds temperatures may be a little higher on average than in previous years, but that shouldn’t really make much difference to when they set off to their summer, breeding grounds in the north. Presumably, they’re driven more by changes in the day length and their internal body-clock. Obviously, they don’t know anything in advance of arriving about how things might have changed in the temperate north.
They arrive at almost exactly the same time each year from Africa and if it’s a little warmer than they expect, then they presumably get a nice warm start to the breeding season. It has been almost 27 Celsius in our Cambridgeshire village today, which is ten degrees hotter than it was this time last year and the year before. It is climate change, although not generally the rising temperature trend, but perhaps one of the increasingly frequent anomalous weather burps.
Aerial lifestyle – Common Swifts spend up to 10 months a year in flight without landing. They eat, sleep, and even mate on the wing.
Flight speed – They can fly at over 100 kmh (about 60 mph) during level flight, making them among the fastest birds in level, flapping flight.
Flying sleep – Swifts can shut down one hemisphere of their brain at a time to get 40 winks…well 20 winks.
Migration – They breed in Europe and migrate to sub-Saharan Africa for the winter, covering tens of thousands of km annually.
Ground contact – Once they fledge, young swifts may not touch the ground again for 2–3 years until they nest for the first time.
Screech parties – During summer evenings, swifts gather in groups and fly at high speeds through city streets and over the countryside, emitting loud, piercing screams.
Lifespan – Despite their small size, swifts can live an unusually long life, over 20 years.
Sticky nests – They build nests in crevices using saliva as glue, often in old buildings, under tiles, or in cliffs, and of course in nest bricks and nest boxes.
Wing efficiency – Their long, crescent-shaped wings and short tails give them an efficient body design for gliding and manoeuvring.
Identity confusion – Though they resemble swallows and martins, with their forked tails and aerial antics, swifts are more closely related to the hummingbirds with whome they share a common ancestor. Features they share with the swallows and martins (the hirundines) is an example of convergent evolution.
One of our local nature reserves has been created from retired gravel pits. It’s known as RSPB Ouse Fen and it’s split across three patches with some active gravel and sand excavations still underway in between*. One patch, the Needingworth side, I mentioned several years ago. The second patch, which is across the river via Brownshill Staunch, can be referred to as the Over end the more recently opened patch is at the village of Earith.
Chinese Water Deer
According to the RSPB website on the subject:
“…when the project is fully complete, Ouse Fen along with its neighbouring RSPB nature reserves; Fen Drayton Lakes and the Ouse Washes, will form a near continuous 3000 hectare wetland habitat, around half the area of the nearby city of Ely.”
Bittern in flight
We visit these places a lot. I’ve mentioned theem here a lot too, not least with reference to Short-eared Owls, vast Starling murmurations (half a million birds in March 2024), Clouded Yellow butterfly irruptions, and Chinese Water Deer (non-native, invasive species). The Earith section is a lovely spot, but often it’s quite quiet in terms of birds.
Today was different.
Black-headed Gull activity was high, first Common Tern of our year spotted, nine Hobbies catching insects on the wing, three or four Marsh Harriers courting on the wing, Water Rail squealing out of sight, numerous Little Grebe wabbling in the water. There were Grey Heron, Little Egret, Great White Egret, Coot, Moorhen, Kestrel, Rooks and Carrion Crow, dozens of Sand Martin, Pheasant, Blackbird, Whitethroat, Wigeon and numerous other ducks, Great Black-backed Gull, Leser Black-backed Gull, Linnet, Snipe, Redshank, Starling, Mute Swan (and according to the Merlin app, Bewick and Whooper, and Pectoral Sandpiper! Yeah, right!), Wood Sandpiper, Cormorant, Blue Tit, Lapwing, Oystercatcher, Canada Geese and Greylag Geese overhead, a few overheard Bearded Reedling and Sedge Warbler, Reed Buntings, lots of Cetti’s Warbler, lots of Reed Warbler, and we missed it, but last year’s Great Reed Warbler seems to have turned up again.
There were lots of Bittern booming and on our second fruitless pass of the GRW spot, we saw six Bittern ducking in and out of one patch of reeds. Most I’ve ever seen together in one sitting was two lots of two on the wing. It’s an amazing comeback for a once almost-extinct (in the UK) species. Its resurgence is largely down to conservation efforts and the creation of new wetland habitat from these ex-gravel pits.
Four of the six Bitterns that were in and out of this patch at RSPB Ouse Fen Earith
*The works have been running for a decade and have another twenty years to go. They take out something like 2 million tonnes of sand and gravel annually. I think they’re reporting that they’ve removed about 16 million tonnes in total so far. Other smaller gravel quarries in the area, such as the one even more local to us here in Cottenham, down Long Drove, have been back-filled and restored to arable farmland.
The call of a cryptic Bittern hidden in a reedbed is one of the most evocative sounds of nature at this time of year. The sound is known as booming, but it’s more like the sound of someone blowing across the top of an empty drinks bottle. Earlier in the season, the frisky males started warming up with some guttural grunts, progressing to the full bottle when they sense the females might be receptive.
Eurasian, or Great, Bittern, Botaurus stellaris
If you were out and about in the fens not twenty years ago, chances of hearing a booming Bittern were very low as the bird was all-but extinct in England. Habitat creation and other conservation efforts have led to a resurgence. So, most walks we take at this time of year among our fenland reserves, many of which are essentially repurposed and planted gravel pits, will reward us with a few booms and an occasional flypast.
I was walking at RSPB Berry Fen this morning. I’d picked up a whole lot of different warblers – Chiff Chaff, Reed Warbler, Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Blackcap, and Garden Warbler [What’s a warbler, anyway? Ed.] and a few Great White Egret, Little Egret, and Grey Heron as well as the usual ducks, crows, gulls, and cormorants. I was at the most northerly part of the fen close to one of those repurposed gravel pits known as Barleycroft Lake (part of RSPB Ouse Fen) and just about to head into the lake area when a male Bittern, appeared, flying low from the lake area. You can tell it’s a male from the pale blue marking on the lores. In ornithology, the lore is the patch between eye and bill on the side of a bird’s head. It’s usually featherless and sometimes coloured, as is the case with male Bitterns.
There are reeds on the edge of that lake, so presumably that’s this male’s usual patch, but it flew out over the dry edge of Berry Fen, sortied a rather brief reconnaissance flight, turned tail, presumably when it realised there was no reedy cover when it saw me and quickly, flew back into the lake area. Luckily, I had a few seconds of its U-turn to grab a few snapshots as it flew past silently. No sonic boom.
The bittern, Botaurus stellaris, is grouped with the herons, storks, and ibises, but obviously most closely resembles a heron than a stork or ibis.
The RSPB highlighted its latest UK Bird Crime Report in this month’s magazine and urged members to help spread the word.
The report covers the illegal persecution of birds of prey (raptors) between 2009 and 2023, revealing routine and widespread criminal activity—much of it linked to the gamebird shooting industry. Beyond the ecological damage caused by releasing millions of pheasants and partridges into the countryside each year, we must confront the deeper issue: it’s time to stop killing wildlife for sport.
The report confirms over 1,500 incidents of raptor persecution, though the real number is likely far higher due to underreporting. More than half of the confirmed cases occurred on land used for pheasant, partridge, or grouse shooting. Shockingly, three-quarters of those convicted had ties to the gamebird shooting industry, and more than two-thirds were gamekeepers.
It’s a disgrace.
In the not-so-distant past, raptors were hunted to the brink of extinction. Over the last fifty years, dedicated conservation efforts have brought species like the Red Kite and White-tailed Eagle back from the edge, and have worked to protect Hen Harriers and Goshawks. But these efforts are continually undermined by a profit-driven industry that sees birds of prey as little more than a nuisance.
Hen Harriers, Golden Eagles, Peregrines, Red Kites, and White-tailed Eagles are still routinely shot, trapped, or poisoned. Offenders often go to great lengths to destroy evidence, making successful prosecutions difficult.
Most bird crime takes place in remote areas, often goes unnoticed, and is rarely punished. Current wildlife protection laws are inadequate, and the penalties don’t go far enough to deter offenders. Scotland has taken steps to strengthen its laws. It’s time the rest of the UK followed suit.
Occasional visits to relatives who live in the leafy suburbs of Surrey always make me feel a little envious of the habitat represented by their garden and its surroundings. Lots of old oaks and other tree species beyond their fence but plenty of spots for birds (Aves) and invertebrates in their garden.
Scarce Tissue moth
I usually get a few moments to survey the life forms in the garden and among those oaks. It doesn’t take long to build a decent garden ticklist of birds. For a recent trip:
Blackbird, Blackcap, Blue Tit, Bullfinch, Buzzard, Carrion Crow, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Dunnock, Firecrest, Goldcrest, Goldfinch, Great Tit, Greenfinch, Green Woodpecker, House Sparrow, Jackdaw, Jay, Long-tailed Tit, Magpie, Mistle Thrush, Nuthatch, Robin, Song Thrush, Stock Dove, Tawny Owl, Wood Pigeon, Wren.
Lunar Marbled Brown moth
I only heard and Goldcrest and it was the Merlin app that picked up the Firecrest. The Tawny Owl was a nocturnal caller, of course. Merlin claimed a Willow Warbler, but I didn’t pick that up aurally or visually. Out on a walk up to and along the Wey River added Canada Goose, Greylag Goose, Mallard, Red Kite. Was half expecting to see House Martin and Swallow, and perhaps Kingfisher, but no such luck with those.
Great Prominent
Meanwhile, I’d brought my Skinner moth trap with me and put that out for a couple of sessions. Unfortunately, it got very cold (near freezing) during the first couple of nights and there were just a Brindled Pug (NFM) and an Early Grey. Third night was a lot warmer (10 Celsius) albeit rainy, but it brought in a much bigger moth haul. I was very pleased to see a few species I’d not seen before, NFM (new for me) moths. Data for the lighting-up session now with Surrey County Moth Recorder.
Frosted Green
Brindled Pug (NFM)
Frosted Green x3 (NFM)
Great Prominent (NFM)
Grey Pine Carpet
Lunar Marbled Brown x3 (NFM)
Muslin
Purple Thorn x2
Red-green Carpet x2
Scarce Tissue x2 (NFM)
The Streamer
Brindled Pug
First Streamer of the year for me in Surrey, and also appeared in our Cambridgeshire garden the night we came home.
The Streamer, so-called because of the streamer-like markings on its forewings
Went for a brief butterfly walk in our local woodland, Les King Wood. Saw my first Speckled Wood of the year, lots more European Peacock, Whites (Small and Large), and numerous male Orange Tip. No Brimstone nor Comma on this outing.
Male Bullfinch perched on an overhead power cable
Just as I was about to head home, I heard a Bullfinch making its plaintive call. Couldn’t see it, so walked along one of the footpaths to bear round the patch where it seemed to be. Still no sign. And, it sounded like it flew off. So, I did a U-turn and headed back to the gate to leave. As if to taunt me, it seemed to come back, calling closer than ever, so I turned again and slowly walked towards where I imagined it was perched. It flew out, perched on an overhead power cable and looked down disgusted at the togger on the ground below.
Not the most evocative photo. The bird looks fine. But, that cable! So, over to a photo algorithm that claims to be able to replace objects. I selected the cable in the app and prompted it to replace the cable with a branch. I had to edit the claws on the branch to make them look slightly more realistic as the app had generated some weird artefacts that weren’t really claws at all. I’m sure there are other apps that do the same job, but this one will do for now as a demo. It’s called photo.ai, by the way.
Male Bullfinch perched on an overhead power cable, replaced with a branch using AI
There had been a very obliging Linnet and some Long-tailed Tits along the edge of the wood earlier.
