It’s a time of year for waiting and listening. The chiffchaffs are already here; they turned up mid-March, tumbling in off the Africa-Yorkshire flyway and filling the leafless beech tops with their chiming two-step jingle.
Now I’m waiting for the blackcaps. The bird writer Edward Grey wrote of being “ears a-tiptoe for the first note of a blackcap” in early spring. But it’s not time yet. The blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) that bred and sang and chacked here last year won’t be back from north Africa or the Med until the first weeks of April.
There’s plenty going on in the meantime. On the riverside footpath, I walk through a drifting snowfall of off-white chaff, and high overhead the winter’s last siskins are picking over the aspen catkins. A bit later on I hear a noise like a shovel scraping snow from a concrete doorstep. It’s a jay, perched low in a sycamore and doing its best to sing. On the river, our kingfishers are renewing their pair-bond, chasing one another through the shadows of the rosebay.
From the deeps of the young woodland, I hear, or half hear, another song – muttered and scratchy, punctuated with crackpot whistles. I only hear it once. This isn’t where our blackcaps usually hang out – they prefer the holly and hedgerow further upriver – but this, I think, is one.
It must be a wintering blackcap, one of the continental contingent that comes over from Germany or Austria just as our summer birds are shipping out for the warm south. They spend the winter battening on our bird tables. But the bird’s singing won’t serve much purpose here; these Mönchsgrasmücken (monk warblers) wait until they’re back home before they stake out territory and breed.
It is easy to forget how much practice goes into bird song. Here, I think I’ve eavesdropped on a run-through, a warm-up. Soon our breeding blackcaps will be back with us, and the real performance can begin again.
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Richard’s Smyth’s A Sweet, Wild Note: What We Hear When the Birds Sing published by Elliot & Thompson, 13 April. To order a copy for £12.74 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p, online orders only
