River Warbler: Well this was a turn out for the books, a baby free saturday, minimal negotiations with Dawn a 2am start and I've just added river warbler to my list. Absolutely brilliant.
The bird performed brilliantly, singing in full view and constantly returning to the same persches in the same small area.
River warblers belong to the Locustella family of warblers, the same as grasshopper warbler, but unlike their more common counterparts these are large, rather nondescript warblers, lacking the grasshopper scaling and with a dark a plain brown back, faintly streaked breast, and pale belly. The tail is rather long and full with a pale-tipped undertail.
These birds are harder to come by then some folk realise, the last twitchable bird was over 11 years ago and the Wigan bird was back in 1995, well before my twitching days.
