Last week I caught sight of a female blackcap in the garden. It disappeared into the depths of a dense hawthorn and I never saw it again. This week I heard a snatch of song from a chiff-chaff. Both warblers were, I suspect, were having a brief pause while making their way down the country before setting off on the long flight to their winter quarters. Chiff-chaffs are very vocal birds. Their songs are, of course, as unmistakeable as the cuckoo's and the sound of the first chiff-chaff in March is as sure a signal that the countryside is coming back to life as the sight of the first swallow. Incidentally, I read that while we Brits think that this bird sings 'chiff' and 'chaff', Germans hear the notes as 'zilp' and 'zalp' and even 'zjit' and 'züf'. Presumably it is the human languages that differ and not the bird's! Chiff-chaffs continue to sing through the summer, even through the moult when birds generally fall silent, and juvenile males join their fathers in singing during the autumn. Song can again be heard in their winter quarters in Mediterranean countries and Africa, but we will not hear it again until rather hesitating, tinkling 'chiff-chaff-chiff-chiff-chaff-chiff' notes from still bare trees mark the return of what Lord Grey of Falloden, Foreign Secretary and a noted ornithologist, called 'a symbol, a promise, an assurance of what is to come'. Unless we are very lucky. Chiff-chaffs are increasingly becoming year-round residents, especially in the south-west, and they are sometimes heard singing in the winter months.
|
