The Furze Wren!, 24th March 2019

We were rolling now, having secured the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker yesterday it was time to add another localised species to the year list. Ever since I was a fledgling birdwatcher I've loved Dartford Warblers. These small but charismatic long-tailed and secretive birds reside almost exclusively on heathland, something that we have precious little of in Oxfordshire, so to see them you have to travel out of the county. Our first encounter with DW's (as we've always called them) was at Dunwich Heath after a visit to Minsmere in the last century. We were new to the birding game and had travelled to Suffolk to see the iconic Avocets at the RSPB's flagship reserve. I must admit to being underwhelmed at the time with the black & white wading birds since they were everywhere you looked. The Dartford Warbler however, captivated my imagination big time. We were told of them being on Dunwich Heath by an RSPB volunteer and were advised to "look for the Stonechats" and the DW's wouldn't be far away. Sure enough we found Stonechats but it took some time and light was fading before we finally found the Dartford Warbler, but what a great little bird! I was so enamoured by them that once home I instantly booked a future holiday to the coastguard cottages on Dunwich Heath so that we could look for them every day for a week, which we duly did. Of course that was back in the days before I owned a camera so all of those good views then are only logged in my memory and that's fading fast these days since I'm not getting any younger. Over the years we had seen Dartford Warblers in lots of other places, including The New Forest, The Devon Heaths, Porthgwarra in Cornwall and even on Guernsey so we'd had lots of views. Sadly we'd missed the one that had graced Otmoor, our local reserve, for a couple of days a few years ago since we were in Cornwall.

Dartford Warbler, Thursley Common, 24/03/2019

More recently we had "discovered" (well, found for ourselves anyway) a small colony of Dartford Warblers on a heath just south of Oxfordshire in Berkshire and for a few years had had good views of them, usually in February and March. Then last year the site yielded none, victims we thought of the Beast from the East, that wicked spell of cold weather in February. This year apparently DW's had been found again on the heath but despite two visits we had drawn a blank once again. 

Dartford Warbler, Berkshire, 14/07/2016

On a blistering hot day in July of last year we twitched a Red-backed Shrike at Thursley Common in Surrey and whilst there were treated to a superb show by a male Dartford Warbler but the heat haze had blown any chance of getting decent photos. My good friend Jim had already been to Thursley this year and had got, as he invariably does, some great shots of the DW's so Mrs Caley and I decided to follow suit and try for ourselves. Being a Sunday meant we could leave the house early and so it was that we were parked up next to the pond before anybody else had arrived. We walked towards the Dragonfly Sculpture, a well known landmark on the common and near where both the DW and Shrike had been seen on our last visit. A wide track leads away from the Dragonfly and is lined by gorse bushes and small trees on either side which provide prime habitat for Dartford Warblers. The first bird we had seen though was a fine male Stonechat perched, as they always do, prominently on the top of a bush. We could hear the melodious song of a Woodlark in the clear air and after a bit of searching found the songster on top of a more distant gorse bush. Then a Skylark burst into song issued from high above the heath.  Wrens, Linnets and Dunnocks joined in the chorus too. It was a beautiful morning!

Stonechat, male

But we had come for Dartford Warblers and had walked a fair way along the track when Mrs Caley nonchalantly said "there's one!". We had passed a large clump of gorse and fortunately she had turned and looked back. On the edge of the gorse bush and stood in full view was a male DW looking resplendent in the morning sunshine. I literally filled my boots and rattled off shot after shot of the thankfully stationary bird. Dartford Warblers can be very hard to pin down so to see this one just perched there was very unusual indeed. It was the photo opportunity that I'd longed to have for years.

Dartford Warbler, male

The Dartford Warbler stayed on the same gorse sprig for a good few minutes before it moved but even then it remained in view within and on the bush. It flew off but only to a nearby bush before departing away over the heath escorted by another. This was going well! We walked on and saw more DW's flitting from gorse bush to gorse bush, they were seemingly all around us and I reckoned we must have been seeing at least 10 different birds. Interestingly most were males, with only 1 or 2 of the more subdued plumaged females, and I surmised that breeding display and territorial disputes were in full swing.

The old adage of "Find a Stonechat then you'll find a Dartford Warbler" then worked to the letter, well almost since we actually saw 3 DW's in the small tree that a Stonechat stood on top of! We were looking right into the bright sunshine now and were so close that I could only get the uppermost DW in the shots.

Stonechat, top & Dartford Warbler, bottom

Having had a generous fill of the Dartford Warblers we took a stroll around a bit more of the heath and took the path up to the top of Shrike Hill. There were lots of Goldfinches singing and displaying in the belt of pine trees. They were joined by a few Siskins but I couldn't find any Crossbills. 

Goldfinch

At the top of the hill we rested on a bench that offered superb views in all directions across the heath. The Woodlark was still serenading away and I was keen to get a good view of it. Our luck was in when it took off on its song flight and flew right over our heads. Unfortunately I didn't do very well with the camera pointed as it was almost directly into the sun. I do enjoy listening to the Woodlarks song, it is truly beautiful.

Woodlark

Curlews were calling and flying over a more boggy area of the common and as we passed on one of the raised boardwalks we heard a Water Rail squealing unseen from the rank grasses and recently arrived Chiffchaffs were singing too. But on reaching the Dragonfly sculpture once more, I just had to have another look for DW's and they didn't disappoint. We found a male and female together in a small tree seemingly just passing the time of day. The male then flew to the top of a small pine sapling and began singing its scratchy song, the first one we'd actually heard singing! It seemed that as the morning had worn on that the male birds, having been chasing the females earlier, had now decided it was time to serenade them.

Dartford Warblers; Female, top & Male, bottom

We stayed and watched the DW's for a while longer and I continued taking lots of photos. I tried to capture the birds flight but that proved a task beyond my skills but I managed a few not so blurry efforts.

One particular male bird took to feeding in a spindly tree and I watched him acrobatically move through the branches. What he found to eat I don't know but I recall reading once that they eat small insects and spiders. The DW stopped to sing a few times but this time no female appeared to be interested. The heather around the tree was visited a few times giving a different backdrop to a few frames.

We'd spent nearly 3 hours with the Dartford Warblers and the other birds but now the heath was getting busy with joggers and dog walkers and the like so we called it a day. But what a fantastic time we'd had  and we vowed to make a visit to Thursley Common a mainstay in the Old Caley calendar.

The "Furze Wren" is an old name for the Dartford Warbler, Furze being another name for Gorse. The first Darty's (another shortened name for them) in the UK weren't recorded until 1773 when a pair were shot on Bexley Heath near Dartford (hence the name). In Bexley Heath there is a pub called the Furze Wren bearing testament to that little piece of DW history.