NATURE — Listening Out For The ‘King Of The Warblers’ As The Tally Of Bird Species SoarsBACK in January, before the world was thrown into turmoil with the coronavirus pandemic, many birdwatchers began keeping a list of species spotted in the new year, writes David Carnduff.
I have not done much “twitching” of late, but decided that starting a year list might be a fun thing to do in the drab days of late winter when I needed a bit of get up and go.
The more species I saw, the more appealing my list-keeping became, and I realised that it is an activity that makes you look for, and appreciate, common birds.
The more I saw, the more enthusiastic I became, spurred on by reading a birdwatching magazine that challenged enthusiasts to try to notch up no less than 200 species during the year.
Early successes included ticking off most of the common garden and woodland birds and one surprise visitor I spotted through the kitchen window was a blackcap.
These little songbirds are mainly summer visitors, but increasing numbers are being seen in gardens in winter when they muscle in at bird tables to grab what food then can.
Research has shown that while the summer blackcaps fly in from the Mediterranean area, the ones seen here in winter are migrants from Germany.
The males are very dapper with their grey plumage offset by a smart black crown. My garden visitor was a female, which has a brown cap.
Then, on a walk at Newark foreshore in Port Glasgow, I was able to add greenshank to my list. These are smart, long-legged wading birds with slightly upturned beaks, and, as the name suggests, green legs.
A handful spend the winter on the Clyde at Port Glasgow and fly north to their remote Highland breeding grounds with the onset of spring.
Compared to other wading birds, such as oystercatcher and ringed plover, which have distinctive plumage, greenshanks are quite understated: they are a connoisseur’s bird that need a certain degree of skill to clinch identification.
But once you’ve got your “eye in”, they can be told apart quite easily from the closely-related redshank, and their distinctive tri-syllabic whistling call is very evocative of wild places.
A few days later on a walk around Lunderston Bay, I was pleased to see four shelduck adding a splash of colour to the foreshore at low tide.
These large ducks are unmistakable, with dark green head and neck, chestnut belly stripe and a red bill; another example, in fact, of the rich and varied birdlife that can be enjoyed within Inverclyde’s boundaries.
As the weeks rolled by, my year list was getting longer and I looked forward to the first summer visitors showing up; then came the lockdown.
With outdoor movements restricted, my focus switched back to appreciating the steady stream of colourful visitors to the garden feeders: blue, great and coal tits, chaffinches, siskins, goldfinches and a whole bunch of sparrows. However, Mrs Blackcap did not show up again.
Now that the season is well advanced, most of the migrants are back with us and woodland is alive with their song.
And one thing which is making this spring particularly memorable, as it happens, is the abundance of blackcaps. The males’ rich warbling song is filling woodlands across Inverclyde.
In fact, the blackcap’s musical prowess has earned it the name of Northern Nightingale and another old name is “King of the Warblers.” Elvis lives in a woodland near you!
(Oh, and my tally of species spotted so far this year is 95.)
