It’s a cold morning, and a glistening coating of frost clings to the green surfaces of the vegetation that is still in the shade. The sun is reaching through the trees, and plumes of mist rise from the river’s surface as it warms.
The golden reed along the river’s edge vibrates with the pulsing, chattering songs of reed warblers and sedge warblers – the sound of a wetland summer. They began to return to Waltham Brooks about a month ago, and now I count more than 30 singing around the reserve. I hear a whirring from a sedge warbler in the brambles next to me, and I turn to watch as it inches up to the top of the bush.
The small, brown bird – with dark streaks on its head and back, and a broad buff stripe above each eye – shrieks and whistles its hurried song, as if it is trying to squeeze as many different notes into as short a time as possible. The skulking reed warblers, with their more rhythmic, unhurried “chett, chett, chett” song, remain hidden lower down.
I walk slowly around the Brooks, listening to the songs and calls of the birds. There’s the profane, explosive outburst of a Cetti’s warbler, the short “seep-seep-sing” of a reed bunting, and the pure trills and crescendos of a distant nightingale. There are four lesser whitethroats – two competing with each other from neighbouring willows. Their song consists of a short stuttering chatter that ends with a long, tuneful rattle of notes almost as pure as a nightingale’s trill.
I’ve encountered lots of lesser whitethroats across different habitats in West Sussex this spring, hearing many more of them in the past two weeks than the more usual, larger common whitethroats. Perhaps the prevailing winds have meant a particularly high concentration in this area.
Three swifts fly past me. The black scythes sweep fast and low, banking to feed on the first insects of the day to emerge from the water. These are the first swifts I’ve seen this year, and I feel my pulse quicken and my heart lift to see them back again.
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