Spending most of its time muttering in their own chuntering subsong, the Lesser Whitethroat was circling its territory at Ainsdale LNR today, but staying low in the birch scrub.
They always sound irritable until they rattle from exposed song posts.
This one was no different, so I thought it best to sit and wait quietly for a few minutes to see if the bird would clamber up to the top of the branches.
The warbler duly obliged and rattled twice before dropping down out of sight again.
I grabbed a few seconds of terrible video (forget the under exposed vid, enjoy the rattle) which you can listen to on YouTube here.
Exposure corrected I fired off these two shots, in almost exactly the same spot where a Lesser Whitethroat held territory last year, and at about the same time too.
Five Sedge Warblers, plenty of Whitethroat and finally my first reeling Gropper (albeit distantly) of the year out there, with 17 Redpoll buzzing over in two groups.
Willow Warblers back in numbers now, and Chiffchaff appeared to be on the move – three appeared out of nowhere in a tree in our garden yesterday evening.
Wish I could have spent more time listening to the Lesser Whitethroat, but I had to get back.
John Dempsey Birdblog 