Bird of the Month: Reed

The Reed Warbler

by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd

It is now a popular refrain that the pandemic’s health and safety restrictions had an unforeseen effect: advancing contentment through a heightened awareness of nature. Taking an ‘awe walk’ is what a ‘happiness officer’ might suggest.

Londoners certainly discovered the truth of Pitt the Elder’s remark, in the 18th century, that the ‘lungs of London’ are the parks. Only the ‘pandemonium’ forced me, like untold others, to explore the royal parks. And it was only a now much-missed friend who drew my attention to an unknown haunt of the reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus). Alister Warman, Director (1983-91) of the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens and last Principal (1991-2003) of the Byam Shaw School of Art, died from cancer in May 2020.

He was a bird-loving walker from boyhood. His last text to me was to ask if the reed warblers had arrived from Africa to nest in the reedbed by the Serpentine Lido. In 2010, 380 yards of reedbeds were planted to fringe the Serpentine in Hyde Park and – its continuation – the Long Water in Kensington Gardens.

I hastened to find out and, sure enough, as the unheeding public flooded by, there were the unmistakable trills and scratchy warbling of a reed warbler. It fleetingly revealed its well-camouflaged self before resuming its song from the safety of the thicket.

A patrolling policeman joined me, hoping to spot a sand martin among the swifts, with swallows and house martins hawking for insects over the water. He told me I might also see a reed bunting and that house martins nested under the eaves of the French and Kuwaiti Embassies, flanking the Albert Gate entrance to Hyde Park. Fifty years in London and I had never noticed. After he left, a splendid cock reed bunting duly confirmed his prediction.

Reedbeds bind loose soil to prevent water erosion, absorb pollutants and provide shelter and breeding grounds for diverse plants, animals, birds and insects. Ninety per cent of them have disappeared over the last century. In 1992, the government signed the Rio Convention, committed to halting biodiversity loss.

The resulting London Biodiversity Partnership, which included the Royal Parks, was part of a national Biodiversity Action Plan to enable local authorities to fulfil a requirement of the 2006 Environment and Rural Communities Act. In modified form, this continues.

The reed warbler, a favourite host of the cuckoo, has seen its numbers double since the late 1970s, to 155,000 (2016). Eastern England, particularly the Fens, has the greatest density, but Welsh expansion and new colonies in Ireland (Eire, since 1981) and Scotland (1987) have also occurred. Reedbed increase is one explanation.

Alister once also flushed a woodcock in Kensington Gardens. At the Byam Shaw, he was brought another, found exhausted in the hubbub of the Holloway Road by one of his students. He released it to recover in the perfect habitat of nearby Highgate’s overgrown old cemetery.