The spring of 2020 was decidedly different in many ways with the longest period of settled, sunny weather in history meaning that migrants were having a great time flying overhead and not stopping and birding travel was decidedly limited. Being able to walk to Barton pits from my house in 10 minutes I was able to notch up a total of 115 species on walkabouts in April and early May but the highlight of a total of a few 100 miles walking was a single male Ring Ouzel in the found bag. My monitoring work at Alkborough Flats continued through the lock down and I had a superb hepatic female Cuckoo fly past me in early May and the first site record of Nightjar on the 14th. Hoping to try and get some photos of the Cuckoo when it reappeared mid-month, I was on site at 05:00 on the 18th but in the first hour the Cuckoo was elusive. When Neil Drinkall arrived at 06:00 we set off to check the usual wader spots but before reaching the first flood a Cuckoo appeared and I paused to try and get some shots. Sometimes fate conspires against you. It was in the back of my mind that my Lincolnshire self-found list was teetering on 299 species and I seriously didn’t want the 300th to be a Cattle Egret! Watching the Cuckoo I heard an urgent whistle from ND and his hand gestures suggested that he was not looking at a Temminck’s Stint. A couple of 100m of part jogging, stumbling on a dodgy knee and I was looking through his scope at two Ringed Plovers and a Dunlin? Then further right a stonking Terek Sandpiper now that would have been a very fitting 300th! The flock of waders were very jumpy as an adult Peregrine was in the area and after about 35 minutes they flew off north and never reappeared. The rest of May drifted by and nothing else cropped up locally to raise the inspiration levels. After an uneventful morning on June 4th I wandered down to Far Ings for a walk around late afternoon not expecting anything very different but near Old Cements a rapid chattering song stopped me in my tracks and I initially thought could this be a Marsh Warbler but the tempo was wrong. Getting the recorder out I managed about a minute of the song then it stopped. Strangely all I could hear from then was a Reed Warbler in the same bushes; surely, I hadn’t made a silly error? A quick listen to the recording suggested that it was an Icterine Warbler but I had not seen the bird and it seemed that the Reed Warbler had driven it off from its chosen privet patch as I had seen a warbler fly across the track into another patch of privet. The recording can be heard here. Further discussions on this recording suggest that it was in fact a Marsh Warbler as per my initial reaction but that it was including some Icterine Warbler song in its repertoire.

The bird sang again a few times later in the evening but remained hidden in the dense scrub and was never seen.

The weather deteriorated over the next couple of days and the forecast for the 7th was not great, cool and overcast with a high chance of rain. I should have been watching Spectacled Eiders and Polar Bears but our Alaska trip had obviously been cancelled and there was a distinct lack of inspiration when I got up on the 7th but at least the poor weather would keep the hordes of visitors away from the pits. Thus, I set off from Waters’ Edge with the intention of checking the pits between there and Chowder Ness taking in the Icterine privet on the off chance. Passing the viewing area ponds I once again reiterated my thoughts that this habitat looked spot on for Common Rosefinch or a Blyth’s Reed Warbler and I had had a singing Marsh Warbler in this spot in June 1992 but today it was mysteriously free from eastern vagrant songs. Having made a point of carrying my camera and sound recording gear all spring, because the day you don’t is the day you need it, I was getting a bit disheartened when I reached Target pit having seen and heard not a lot of note. Then as I approached the road at the south side of Target Lake I heard a Blackcap singing but there were some odd loud notes coming from what seemed to be the same direction that certainly didn’t fit with my extensive experience of Blackcap song including their range of mimicry. Every spring I make a point of sitting down and listening to potential visitors on the brilliant Collins Warbler Songs and Calls of Britain and Europe. The recordings on this little-known set are brilliant and compare similar species directly for identification purposes. In autumn likewise I listen to Calls of Eastern Vagrants by Hannu Jannes because you need to be prepared and my memory isn’t what it was!

Emerging from the Target Lake path onto Far Ings road the call notes were rather loud and sounded like a Chiffchaff alarm and a Great Tit, surely this was not a Great Tit after all, the go to species for all those notes and songs that you don’t recognise? Fortunately, the steadily repeated phrases and excellent mimicry immediately said Blyth’s Reed Warbler and with that a bland looking acro appeared on the edge of a hawthorn bush but the song had stopped and the bird in view was silent. Then it disappeared back into cover and the song started up again – it had to be a Blyth’s Reed Warbler a bird I had never heard in the flesh so to speak. Panic set in and I fumbled for the sound recording kit getting some of the phrases down before ringing a few locals and trying to let them hear the song via the headphones. At this stage I was still really going on the song, albeit the most distinctive part of a somewhat nondescript species, but really wanted to see the bird well and hopefully get a photograph. After a few minutes it appeared on the edge of a wild rose and a couple of images confirmed the ID beyond all doubt it was a singing Blyth’s Reed Warbler but on my local patch what were the chances of that ever happening? Further recordings and watching and photographing the bird over ensuing days revealed its full range of mimicry with many species being recognisable including Beeeater, Quail, Great Tit, Chaffinch, Swallow, Chiffchaff and apparently other people recognised Dipper and Pied Flycatcher. It produced at least three different calls all with a checking quality but including a semblance to a rattle with notes run together in a rapid sequence and these were often given when it fed low down in the nettles and ditch side vegetation. Its song perches were usually quite high up in the bushes and trees alongside the ditch but on the first day it also sang quite regularly from the edge of a narrow reed strip on the adjacent pit. Bouts of feeding were initially very short as it dropped down into the vegetation on the ditch side gleaning insects from the leaves of nettles and reeds but later it spent more time feeding particularly in the afternoons and evenings on cooler days. The bird’s plumage tones varied quite dramatically in different light conditions and with reflections from the vegetation in which it was sat or feeding but in general it was a bit greyer brown than Reed Warbler with the underparts being grey tinged contrasting with the white chin and throat. The supercilia, broader and more obvious before the eye and only just extending past the eye was another obvious feature. The legs were obviously dark appearing grey toned and the short primary projection was strikingly obvious while the bill although seeming to change in shape at times usually looked particularly long and spiky in profile.

After getting the news out on the first day and relaxing with some recordings and images in the bag it was time for the celebratory Sunday evening curry but it was a while before it dawned on me that this was in fact my 300th self-found Lincolnshire bird and a very fitting one, something truly rare and exceptional inland and on my local patch where I have spent over 40 years slogging. The patch has not done my self found list badly though, from my first county rarity a Hoopoe, also at Far Ings in May 1969, through such notables as Little and Alpine Swifts, Little Bittern, Whiskered and White-winged Terns to Ring-billed, Laughing and Bonaparte’s Gulls. Now I can have a lie in and retire from bird finding but I’ve been listening to the song of Green Warbler this week, just in case.

Overall though, this just does go to show that time in sometimes equals birds out and you certainly will not find rare birds sitting in front of the computer, which is nearly where I ended up on June 7th 2020 – pleased I made the effort and a bit of inspiration for the summer; maybe that Greater Sand Plover will eventually fall this year; fancy getting married on the day one turns up in Lincs who would do something daft like that?

A series of links to sound recordings of the Blyth’s Reed songs and calls are given below and many more images are available on my blog at  https://pewit.blogspot.com

https://www.xeno-canto.org/567193

https://www.xeno-canto.org/567196

https://www.xeno-canto.org/567199

https://www.xeno-canto.org/566128

 https://www.xeno-canto.org/566126

 Other notes:

The male Blyth’s Reed Warbler stayed for a total of 11 days in its chosen territory and sang every day mainly in the mornings with long gaps in the afternoons and from the third or fourth day it hardly ever sang in the evenings and checks up to 22:30 at night revealed that it was not singing then either. The song was remarkably varied and included lots of mimicry with addition species to those noted above being the flight call of Nightjar, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Blue Tit but no doubt other calls were being mimicked as well. The bird defended a linear territory that covered about 50m of a broken hedge consisting of hawthorn, wild rose, bramble and a mature ash and weeping willow trees. From about day eight it occasionally moved a further 30m along the hedge but its centre of activity was a single ash tree and two clumps of wild rose. The adjacent ditch to the north of the hedge was also an integral part of its territory and this was where it fed most of the time in the reed, nettles and umbellifers but it did occasionally also appear to feed in the narrow strip of reeds along the northern edge of the adjacent flooded clay pit and in the first days of its stay it also occasionally sang from this same reed fringe. The territory was defended against a Reed Warbler and a Cetti’s Warbler that occasionally strayed into the ditch and it was seen doing some short display flights and following another acro on a few occasions later in its stay. This second bird was not seen well but was assumed to be a female Reed Warbler that was coming into the ditch and hedge from the hedge to the north of the adjacent track. The bird’s calls were distinctive being a harsh churrr sometimes longer and a bit higher pitched and almost a rattle at times. The second bird noted above also appeared to give a very similar call which was confusingly similar to the BRW. On the very wet 17th with a cool northerly wind blowing it sang well in the morning but by early afternoon was doing more feeding and on one occasion moved into the middle of a large hawthorn where it preened and then puts its head on its back and went to sleep gentle rocking in the rain.

The long stay of this bird and even the location, just 500m away, recalled the events of the spring of 1997 when a male Marsh Warbler held a territory at Far Ings from May 31st to at least June 18th.