March 24th

The early chiffchaff came to me today. My wife called me into the garden this morning because she had heard a chiffchaff calling in a neighbour’s garden. I didn’t need much incentive to drop my work and rush outside. It took two trips out, and some climbing on a wall, before I saw it feeding in trees and bushes next door. A pair of blue tits were doing the same and chased the chiffchaff away every so often. Chiffchaffs are very quick and are constantly on the move, so I don’t think it made any difference to it, although it made trying to get a photo tricky. It was a milder day today and the chiffchaff was feeding fast, picking small insects and spiders from the tree branches: it might have been fresh in this morning, after an overnight flight from France or even Spain. It was certainly too busy feeding even to sing. The first chiffchaff is always the real start of spring for me.

My first chiffchaff this morning – conveniently in my next door neighbour’s garden but still hard to pin down