You may have noticed how things tend to go a bit quiet on the bird front by the third week of June.
Many have bred by then and do not need to keep singing to attract a mate or ward off a rival. The rich dawn chorus of earlier months sadly tails off all too quickly and much of the daytime singing evaporates in the summer heat.
Species are often also harder to see because they cannot be located by sound and are resting up after days spent hunting to satisfy a nest full of begging beaks.
So I was not expecting to see or hear much on a late afternoon walk in the heat wave a few weeks back. It was so hot I nearly didn’t go – which as it turned out would have been a bad move.
As I predicted, things were pretty quiet. But then came music to my ears – a very loud and familiar cacophony of jumbled notes coming from beside the path 100 yards away.
Our nationally scarce Cuckoo loves this sound because it advertises the presence of a favourite common host species. But in the Cranleigh area it is the sadly declining Cuckoo which is more common than this little bird that unwittingly brings up the brood parasite’s young.
The songster in full flow was a Reed Warbler, so rare around here that I see an average of only one every five years. We call this sort of find ‘gold dust’ or ‘patch gold.’
It does what it says on the tin. Warbles in the reeds. Except where we live I have found no decent reed beds for it to breed so the ones we get are mostly in May and having a breather while on Spring passage from west African countries.
They can turn up where they are least expected. I once enjoyed the pleasure of one singing in my garden for a morning while my other sightings include hedges at Smithwood Common, the Downs Link and in the front garden of a house behind Cranley Hotel.
They are skulking birds and in every case gave themselves away by their amazing song. Once they get going they hardly stop for a breather. The notes are a rhythmic mix of rising and falling grating churrs, interspersed with squeaks, whistles and harsh chatter.
One of these migrants was doing so in a large garden hedge near Notcutts Garden Centre – a visit unlikely to have been repeated, even if the hedge had not been later replaced by a brick wall.
My unexpected find turned up very late in the year. Some do leave their winter quarters as late as June but this one could have been a failed breeder trying its luck for another date.
I imagined I would locate him in some dense undergrowth but on edging closer found the song was coming from the area of a small pond edged with just a slim margin of reeds. Evidently this was enough to tickle his fancy.
After another six-minute performance the Reed Warbler ‘shut up shop.’ I waited 45 minutes for an encore but it was not to be and, as with many previous encounters with this species in the Cranleigh area, I failed to see it.
Early next morning I returned to the site just in case it had stayed the night. Almost immediately I was surprised and delighted as it put on another concert. One minute the song appeared to be coming from one area, the next it seemed to be somewhere else.
Reed Warblers are like ventriloquists. But I was delighted when this slim buff and brown visitor finally made an appearance. After 25 minutes it eventually showed near me as it clambered up a reed, singing all the way and showing off its natural loud hailer – a huge orange gape.
As the day grew hotter it went quiet and on subsequent visits I concluded it had moved on without attracting a mate. If it was an unsuccessful breeder perhaps it is home by now and will never have the chance to see its own chicks.
Reed Warblers only live for an average of two years. But their music lives on in the ears of those who hear them.
