Another walk at Stanwick Lakes today - well if you can't get out lots on a sunny May Bank Holiday weekend when can you?
I always think there are 'the basic eight' warblers. These are those that you might reasonably expect to see on a May walk in most of southern Britain - chiffchaff, willow warbler, sedge and reed warblers, blackcap and garden warbler and the two whitethroats (common and lesser). Through the year I see all of these on my regular patch. A few chiffchaffs are present right through the year - they are sometimes in the winter tit flocks - and are the first to start singing in March or even earlier when the residents are joined by returning migrants. Next to sing are the blackcaps and then the willow warblers come back - it's an odd year if I don't hear all three by the end of March. April brings the sedge warblers and whitethroats first and then reed warbler and garden warbler, and eventually I catch up with a lesser whitethroat simply because they are less common at the places I normally go than the other species.
This is the time of year when I might hear all eight in the same day and I did today! It's the lesser whitethroat that is always the most difficult because I think they simply sing less than the other species. Their song is a rattling call which is quite characteristic but can be confused with a yellowhammer or even the beginning of a chaffinch song - particularly when everything sings at once. They can be overlooked more easily than the racket of sedge or reed warblers coming from a patch of scrub or reeds, or the onomatopoeic song of the chiffchaff.
I heard two lesser whitethroats today - and none yesterday on exactly the same walk at more or less the same time of day and under similar weather conditions. In fact, the first lesser whitethroat today was singing with gusto right by the path - it certainly wasn't doing that as I passed the very same point yesterday. Such differences from day to day add to the pleasure of walking your local patch - every day really is different, with different species and different sightings and this is how one can keep in touch with the wonderful variety of the natural world and chart the passing seasons in one's own life.