Warbler Weekend

MORE WARBLERS have touched down, the males are making themselves conspicuous, not just by singing, but, in the case of the Whitethroat and the Sedge Warbler, with short song flights too. The Sedge Warbler (pictured) has a raucous and varied, up front song, reminding me of the endless patter of a stand-up comedian.

The Garden Warbler, by comparison, is the epitome of elegance, it lacks any bold markings, its song has phrases that remind me a bit of a blackbird, like a whetted whistle, a fruity, rather than a scratchy song. Trying to come up with an image to match the structure of the song, I think of one of those little fountains that keeps a ping-pong ball bobbing about in the air. It's a song with a lot of energy, it doesn't tail off wistfully.

As you would guess, these two warblers are quite specific to habitat and we found garden warblers at the open edges to the wood and sedge amongst the willows and scrubby bushes close to the canal.

I see the first of the Cinnabar moths, the intense magenta markings advertise the fact they are poisonous. Miriam Rothschild did research on these moths and discovered they are able to store the alkaloid poison found in one of their foodplants, Ragwort. But I have also heard it said that caterpillars fed on a non-toxic alternative to ragwort are still able to develop the poison.

Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail; 'richard@daelnet.co.uk'