The Sedge Warbler

by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd

No bird species are harder to differentiate than those summer migrants from Africa, the warblers (Sylviidae).

They’re plumaged to blend with invariably dense habitats. Reed and sedge warblers (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus) are typical examples.

The Rev Gilbert White (1720-93), the parson and pioneer naturalist, was the first person to denote a kiss with an x. He was also the first in England to distinguish the sedge from the reed warbler, notably by its ‘creamy white eyebrow’.

Schoenobaemus can be loosely translated as ‘reed walker’, acknowledging the bird’s nimble passing from one stem to the next. But despite the two birds’ similar British populations (250,000) and habitat, the sedge warbler, less confined to reed beds, is distributed throughout the British Isles. The more reed-bound reed warbler predominantly favours England.

Song is the best means of warbler identification. But with these two being cousins and often neighbours, the song is similar, albeit the sedge warbler’s is more varied and has a greater range.

On a tour last year of the Fulton family’s exemplary and privately-run Elmley Nature Reserve on the Isle of Sheppey, I heard reed and sedge warblers singing from the reed beds. Three members of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust who were present were unanimous in rating the sedge warbler’s song far superior to its cousin’s. Males of both species sing to persuade a passing female to be their mate.

Professor Clive Catchpole’s study of the sedge warbler has concluded that the wider the male’s repertoire, the more quickly he attracts a female. Thus virtuosity, full of mimicry so that each declamation is original, has a vital purpose. By comparison, the reed warbler’s more deliberate and regular song announces availability rather than superiority.

On 23rd May 1915, Edward Thomas (1878-1917), in the year he voluntarily enlisted to fight in the war despite the fact that marriage and age exempted him from conscription, strolled beside the River Meon beyond Warnford in Hampshire.

In his notebook, he wrote, ‘Water crowfoot and marigolds, iris leaf and clear swift combing water but no nymph – only the sedge warblers…’ He produced a poem the same day:

…And sedge-warblers, clinging so light

To willow-twigs, sang longer than the lark, Quick, shrill or grating, a song to match the heat

Of the strong sun, nor less the water’s cool, Gushing through narrows, swirling in the pool.

Their song that lacks all words, all melody, All sweetness almost, was dearer then to me Than sweetest voice that sings in tune sweet words.

From Sedge-Warblers

Gerry Cambridge (b 1959), with a reference to ‘Edward Thomas’s emblem for untouchable optimism’, adds his poetic tribute:

Diminutive, they need to believe in enthusiasm’s principle, hurrying out their song, its chacks, its churrs, clicks and wheezes, its pebbleclackings, trying the variations, rejigging the riffs, endlessly rephrasing, way past midnight in the May darks, exulting in energy, spruce with their cream eyebrows, all for a plain mate, these solo performers in June’s green pub on the stage of a twig.

From Acrocephalus Schoenobaenus (Aves, Essence Press)