Cetti’s Warbler

Cettia cetti

Few birds have the capacity to make you jump out of your skin, and possibly soil your clothing, like the Cetti’s Warbler.

Perhaps you’re enjoying a quiet walk along the canal or riverside when this barrage explodes without warning beside the path.

Don’t expect to clap eyes on the culprit. Cetti’s (pronounced chett-eeze) warblers spend their days hidden in thick scrub, ditch-side, and seem happy to call out from the depths. Perhaps, like the nightingale, they figure their powerful notes will cut through regardless of perch. They’re probably right.

The sound, which is more of a telling-off than a song, carries far across flat landscapes.

There are often long pauses between bursts, making them even harder to locate.

Cetti’s Warblers are recent additions to Britain, having colonised from the near Continent only in the last fifty years.

For the first couple of decades their numbers were checked by severe winter weather, but lately they have spread far from their early strongholds in the south to arrive in Wales and Northern England, wherever there are reedy, low-lying marshes.

Like some other warblers they appear to be taking advantage of milder winters, to the extent that Cetti’s Warblers don’t seem to migrate at all. They can be found all-year round in their favoured patches - which include the margins of out-of-town retail parks and waste-disposal sites - and sing in their sporadic way in all seasons.

Those indignant calls are always hard to ignore, but especially in the winter, when there aren’t many noises being thrown out from the scrub.