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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dantheman" data-source="post: 2758019" data-attributes="member: 32998">Day one, still continuing ...Driving only a short distance, we parked up alongside a small humpbacked bridge crossing a wide ditch and started birding again. A channel ran alongside the track to our left, and we now were happy to contend with scrub and trees, in addition to wet meadows. A Yellowhammer slurred its ‘a-little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheeeese’ trademark song from a leafy perch, a Nightingale sang its resonant fruity tones from deep within the alders and waterside trees, except of course it was actually a Thrush Nightingale. There were more than one, and I managed to sight one on its dimly lit perch within the arbours. This was nice as I’d only seen them on one occasion before – a bunch of migrants on the edge of a reedbed in Turkey. Corncrakes continued to call from the damp grasslands to our right. Something bigger and browner flew over the track and behind the trees  – Woodcock I wondered? Most probably it was. We hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards and to another bridge when Milda signalled another bird song – ‘River Warbler’ she said. And yes I could hear it too, to quote from the Collins ‘… a remarkable machine-like shuttling …’ Now I am a bit rubbish on calls and birdsong at the best of times, but having heard reeling Grasshopper Warblers down on The Lizard (Cornwall) not a few weeks before I could actually appreciate the difference. But now to see the bird …‘They’re usually really well hidden in the trees and scrub’ Milda said ‘We might not see it’. Whereupon I replied ‘Is that it?’, indicating a small brown shape in a tangle of dead stems on the ditch bank. And indeed it was it.I think I can best describe the bird as a small greyish-brown triangle, a bit rounded at the edges admittedly, but a smart wedge of a bird indeed. A Sedge Warbler popped up, giving a nice size comparison – it wasn’t actually that small. It flew across the ditch (it looked a bit less triangular shaped in flight), and continued to sing in full view on the top of another tangle of dead stems, albeit mostly with its back to us, its broad rounded tail and occasional head profile revealing its true shape (still quite triangular, there's no getting away from it!). Excellent!  Another target species in the bag. Being a bit too casual for some reason, we’d left both scopes back in the car – my lightweight ED50 Nikon travelscope and Milda’s hefty Kowa. This being a lifer, and a bit distant, Milda graciously trotted back to the car for the scope, returning with hers a few minutes later. The bird hadn't moved.We (ok mostly me) enjoyed cracking scope views of the songster, occasionally flaunting its distinctive white-tipped undertail coverts like a mini Black-billed Cuckoo. Ok, not really, but they were smart and distinctive. I also looked at the topside of its tail (it’s probably deemed a bit rude to look at the nether regions of a bird for too long) for balance, although this wasn’t quite so exciting. For the record, this was browny coloured.At this point a fluty, rich, bugling could be heard off to our left, further down the track – Common Cranes. Of course, they probably bred here. To be honest, I don’t recall hearing a single pair of Cranes before – large flocks on migration or wintering in France and Spain, so we left the River Warbler to its own devices for a while, and carried on down the track a little way past the belt of trees accompanying the slow- running ditch.This was reasonably good ... but</blockquote>

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