Warbling on
How wonderful to hear the warblers. They are all around my home. If only we had the babblers too. But they are in Australia and Asia. Of course they are all selling themselves, like all of us. But somehow they never bore. Even though it is the same old song year in, year out. They do not seem at all like tired politicians. Yet actually they are ranting on.
A few minutes ago I was listening to a garden warbler for instance. He had chosen himself a hazel twig as high up in the bush as he dared to go without being seen by a hawk. His little beak was wide open, his crest raised, his black eye bright. His desire was boiling. He was on his podium. His words were a continuous chattering diatribe.
The bluebells didn't care. They were blooming their best blue for bumble bees. Seed must be set, that very day. The bees didn't care, they had pollen bags to fill for the 35 grubs in the waxen cells down the mouse hole in the mossy banks. The badgers were snoring in their tunnels beneath my garage dreaming of earthworms.
The song of Sylvia borin would be boring to all of these. But someone else was listening. He had been assessing and evaluating, taking in this tirade of a tune. Like a parrot, he was thinking: some interesting ideas here. I wonder if I can use them. Rather a pity, when our blackcap warbler already has a voice which with a lifetime of training could possibly approach the song of the nightingale.
Sylvia atricapilla known to the French as Fauvette tte noire, to the Germans as Monchsgrasmucke, is just about the easiest warbler of all to hear, to see, and to identify in our Sussex woods. It is common and clever because it has learned to spend the winter in Sussex gardens instead of crossing the firing lines of Morocco, Malta and Marseilles, wherein such places all but the meat of their tiny breasts is boring.
Zwartcop (as he is known to the Dutch, who thankfully do not touch), plays this little trick every now and then and I used to despair when mapping birds by their vocals, until I realised that a song thrush or blackbird in the wrong place on my map was actually a Svarthatta (to the Swedes, in whose homeland it breeds).
The Diabelli Variations are human equivalents to the blackcap warbler's skill in weaving new tunes from old. So watch out: cross dressing may be taking place in the woods. Then there is the willow warbler and the chiffchaff. These two are common throughout Sussex. They are among the ten so-called leaf warblers of Europe, tiny birds related to goldcrests and firecrests – our smallest birds of all.
"Chiff-chaff", sings the chiff-chaff, all day long. Why is this not boring? Supposing Gordon Brown sang "Gordon Brown" all day long outside Number Ten. We might be amused for a minute but certainly not soothed. But soothing too is the song of the willow warbler all day around my home, an unobtrusive, lilting cadence of falling notes.
These two warblers are almost impossible to tell apart, and they have even been known to swap songs. Look at their spindly little legs – chiffs have black legs (and black spots on their eggs), willows have flesh coloured legs, and flesh-coloured spots on their eggs.
There is yet another warbler near the house: the whitethroat warbler. He warbles away among the nettles and brambles, while also weaving his wife her fragile nest of fine, dead grass stems. This looks like the tea-strainer I use every afternoon at ten to three. Jerky, harshly-sweet notes come from that white throat of his, the feathers standing out like the white silk cravats of a Georgian gent.
Warble on, warblers, in England and the EU. Babble on, babblers, in North Korea. You're all worth your weight in gold.
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Weather for Chichester
Monday 13 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 6 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: North west
