...and Spring in their wake.

The Chiffchaffs have returned. 

For the last couple of weeks I've been hearing their 'chiff, chaff, chiff, chaff' calls everywhere, as though someone flicked a switch and turned on the Spring. Wonderful to see them again, seeming to bring the warm weather with them. I went for a short walk one lunchtime during the week and found myself beside a culverted stream by a footpath between some houses and a small industrial area. Great Tits were calling from the trees and some Robins watched me from a fence whilst a Chiffchaff sang merrily as it hung from the branches and pecked at the new buds. As I watched, it came closer and closer until it stood in a bush just ten feet from where I stood, calling and chiffing as I got the best view I'd ever had of one of these superb little birds. Such a lovely thing; a little brown job that some might disregard as being uninteresting, yet some of these little scraps of feather may have flown here from as far away as Senegal in Western Africa. That's a long way to fly for such a tiny bird, a long way to travel for anyone without an airline ticket. Perhaps these little travellers deserve to be given more attention, rather than being ignored as just another LBJ. 

A Chiffchaff by the river, photographed in September 2008.