In Search of Nightingales at Fishers Green

5th May 2014

The original plan was for Andy and I to go up to The Lodge to hopefully photograph the newly-fledged young Ravens, but in the event the weather looked rather unsettled and so we decided on Fishers Green as a lower risk local site. The primary objective was to look for Nightingales but realistically anything that put its head up would be acceptable.

We certainly heard many Nightingales on our travels, many seemingly just 10 yards away but always deep in cover as per their reputation, and a couple of flight glimpses were all we managed. This is fairly consistent with previous visits and I believe that it is much harder to get good views of Nightingales at Fishers Green than at Paxton Pits or Fingringhoe Wick.

We therefore abandoned that plan and moved on to an area of low hawthorn and bramble scrub in the hope of some Whitethroats. There were indeed a couple of Whitethroats present albeit fairly subdued and quite flighty. At that point we noticed a bird shuffling round in a bramble bush and so stood motionless waiting for the Whitethroat to appear. The bird did eventually show itself but instead of being a Whitethroat turned out to be a Garden Warbler. Still, mustn't grumble as these were my first photos of this species!!