Witham Birds

The River Witham is home to a variety of birds. We’ve picked out those you should regularly see on your trips to the river to help you learn a little bit more about our feathered friends.

All images by Steve Nesbitt – with thanks

Description: The chiffchaff is an unassuming, petite, olive-brown warbler with dark grey legs. It is very difficult to distinguish from the willow warbler. The best way to recognise it is through its distinctive ‘chiff-chaff-chiff-chaff’ song. 

Habitat: Chiffchaffs are usually summer visitors from Africa, although some are year-round residents in the UK. They are usually one of the first summer visitors to arrive and can be heard singing their song in woodlands, parks and gardens with trees from late February onwards. 

Diet: The chiffchaffs diet consists mainly of insects and spiders which it picks off trees, occasionally capturing flying insects on the wing. 

Breeding: The male chiffchaff is very territorial during breeding season, fiercely protecting territories of up to 20m. The female builds her domed nest low down in dense vegetation or even on the ground. She uses grass and dead leaves and lines the nest with soft feathers before laying 5 or 6 eggs which she incubates for two weeks. The female then feeds and broods the chicks for a further two weeks with very little input from the male. They may raise up to two broods in a year. 

Interesting Fact: The chiffchaff is also named after its call in some other countries, for example in Germany it is called the Zilpzalp and in Wales the Siff-Saff.

Description: This medium-sized dove is predominantly a buffy grey colour with darker wing tips and a dark collar. Its ‘coo-COO-coo’ song is very recognisable. 

Habitat: Found in gardens, towns and villages – widespread across the UK. 

Diet: The collared dove feeds on seeds, grains and shoots. 

Breeding: Collared doves are monogamous and will breed year-round if food is plentiful. They build flimsy nests of sticks and twigs, usually in close proximity to houses and other buildings and often on 

security lights or in gutters. The female lays two eggs which she incubates during the night and the male takes over to incubate through the day. 

Females have been known to start building a new nest whilst still incubating her previous clutch and can still be feeding her previous chicks whilst incubating the next ones. 

Interesting Fact: Collared doves only arrived in the UK in the 1950s having spread way beyond their native reaches in the Eastern regions of Asia. They colonise so quickly they have now reached as far as America.

Description: Dunnocks are small, streaky-brown passerines (perching/songbirds), similar in shape and size to a robin. They have a fine pointed beak, a greyish head and orange legs. Dunnocks are usually seen shuffling around, close to cover in flower beds and under vegetation, and as such are also known as hedge sparrows. They will, however, perch up a little higher to sing their loud song. 

Habitat: Dunnocks favour parks, gardens and farmland with dense scrub, brambles or hedgerows. 

Diet: Dunnock’s are mainly insectivorous, their diet mostly consists of small insects, spiders and worms. They also eat small seeds. 

Breeding: The female dunnock builds a nest which is a deep cup built of twigs, grasses and moss and is usually lined with wool or soft feathers and is positioned out of sight, low down in conifers or dense hedgerows. She will lay two or three clutches of 4-5 eggs during the breeding season which she alone will incubate. The male/s will help feed the chicks once they have hatched. 

Unusually, female dunnocks will often mate with more than one male in the hope that they will all help with rearing the young. This strategy has resulted in males attempting to rid the females of any previous male’s sperm by pecking around her cloacal opening in a bid to get her to eject any previous deposits. Not surprisingly, DNA sampling has shown chicks in the same clutch to have been fathered by more than one individual male. 

Interesting Fact: The dunnock is often a host of the Cuckoo. It is thought that this is because the dunnock has not yet learned to differentiate between eggs and cuckoos have yet to evolved eggs to match those of their host.