May 18th

Sedge warbler – check out a rape field and there will be one or two at least singing

There are a lot of rape fields this year – the landscape is punctuated by squares of bright yellow. It’s a very cheerful crop and surprisingly good for birds. Most monoculture fields are dull places but a flowering field of rape at this time of year is alive with insects and consequently birds. I walked around the large rape field adjacent to Kilrenny common last night and counted at least 9 sedge warblers singing their hearts out from within the crop. There were three reed buntings, a dunnock, a couple of whitethroats and even a corn bunting doing the same. If we get a shrike this year it will likely be at the edge of a rape field too, taking advantage of the island of insects in an otherwise very impoverished landscape. Hedges or trees round the edge of a rape field, as it is at Kilrenny, seem to make them particularly good.