Thursday 17th January - Winter Warbling

Warblers shouldn't be spending the Winter in Britain, indeed the vast majority head south to African forests. There has always been a few Blackcaps which stay behind, mostly in the warmer southern suburbs, where bird-table fodder seems to satisfy their Winter needs, and of course more frequently Chiffchaffs can be found often around working sewage plants which have open filter beds which provide sufficient Winter bugs, presumably pooh flies are the Chiffchaff equivalent of Christmas Turkey. The very occasional Yellow-browed Warbler or lingering Dusky Warbler are located and the slightly less common Hume's Warbler. Such an individual being present in Newhaven, East Sussex for the last few weeks.

Thursday morning I went to Newhaven to the Ouse Estuary scrubland to find this individual. There was a fairly large area of scrub, mainly Elder and Bramble. The Hume's Warbler has a reasonable distinct call, which I heard as soon as I reached the area in which it had been seen. Seeing the little blighter proved to be a bit more of a challenge. It would only call very intermittently, say every 30 minutes, and it stubbornly occupied the middle layer of the dense scrub, so was pretty uncooperative. It was a bright morning but with a biting wind and even a few brief snow flurries.

About an hour later, I had my first glimpse of the bird, but it then went to ground again, with no sight or sound. It took another hour before eventually it started feeding on the outside edge of a bramble and Elder bush giving more satisfactory views, reasonably distinct in it's appearance as a much paler bird than it's yellow-browed cousin.

Hume's Warbler

Staying hidden in the scrub for long periods