Birdwatch: Rare opportunity as warblers home in

One of Britain’s rarest breeding birds, the Savi’s warbler, may be on the point of establishing itself in Yorkshire.

Up to three singing males have been present this summer in a remote area of reedbed at the RSPB’s Blacktoft Sands reserve near Goole, it was revealed this week. There was also one heard on the reserve last year.

To have three together at one site in this region is exceptional and this, combined with the fact that at least two of the birds sang for prolonged periods, suggests that successful breeding may have taken place. However, it may not be possible to prove this until later in the year when the birds have left to spend the winter in Africa and autumn maintenance work is carried out on the reedbed.

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Then, hopefully, a Savi’s warbler’s nest, a distinctive structure woven from sedge blades and grasses and built low in the reeds will be discovered.

Pete Short, site manager at Blacktoft Sands, told me that news of their presence was not released earlier because none of them were and only one of them could, very occasionally, be heard from the reserve’s hides or footpaths.

Also there were fears that they could be targeted by egg collectors, putting not only them but other rare birds breeding nearby at risk.

Previous records of Savi’s warblers in Yorkshire have involved single vagrant birds such as the one which attracted hundreds of birdwatchers to the RSPB’s Old Moor reserve in South Yorkshire at the end of May last year. The Savi’s warbler is from the same family as the more commonly heard grasshopper warbler but its song is a lower continuous buzzing which has sometimes been confused with the noise made by electricity pylons.

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It is named after the Italian professor who first identified it early in the 19th century and bred regularly in this country until 1860 when it became extinct due to the draining of its wetland habitats.

In the 1960s it made something of a comeback to south east England as part of a general expansion of its European range but in recent years numbers have rarely risen above six pairs a year.

Savi’s warblers have a fairly restricted habitat, occurring mainly in large mature reedbeds with lots of layers of growth. The work carried out to maintain the reedbed at Blacktoft Sands, providing a mix of mature reeds and pools, should continue to provide ideal habitat for them- now it remains to be seen if the Savi’s buzzing call is heard again at Blacktoft next spring.

There is also good news concerning one of the reserve’s more familiar residents, bearded tits which are busily replacing the losses caused by last winter’s harsh weather.

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Some 85 per cent of the reserve’s bearded tit population starved to death after a two-day period during which the reed heads, providing the seeds on which they totally depend in winter, were frozen solid.

Only between 20 and 25 pairs were left this spring but each pair has produced at least 10 young which means there are now sightings of young bearded tits with their distinctive orange plumage all round the reserve.

A marsh sandpiper has remained at Blacktoft Sands while two Temminck’s stints and a semipalmated sandpiper were at the Saltholme reserve on Teesside and a little stint at Edderthorpe Flash, South Yorkshire.A black-necked grebe was at Tophill Low, a nightjar was on the Spurn peninsula and a common crane was at the Nosterfield nature reserve, North Yorkshire. Storm petrels have continued to be seen along the Yorkshire coast with two caught and ringed at Burniston while there have also been some sightings of sooty shearwaters.