{"id":4424,"date":"2016-04-10T11:25:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T11:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/?p=4424"},"modified":"2016-04-10T12:29:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-10T12:29:28","slug":"spring-surprises-treecreeper-first-swallows-ground-nesting-heron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/10\/spring-surprises-treecreeper-first-swallows-ground-nesting-heron\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Surprises: Treecreeper, First Swallows, Ground-Nesting Heron"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ground-Nesting<\/a>
Ground-Nesting Heron a la Swan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spring is full of surprises, and this Heron, nesting not in a colony up in the trees, but all alone in an abandoned Swan’s nest in a reedbed, is certainly one of them. The London Wetland Centre this morning also boasted a mass of Blackcaps in the “Wildside” woodland, with at least three males and a female actually in sight at once,\u00a0 along with an obliging Chiffchaff giving me an excellent view, and a characteristically invisible Cetti’s Warbler, shouting out its amazingly loud call. The Silver Birches were in wonderfully fresh green leaf, their bark crisply white against the clear blue of the sky.<\/p>\n

\"Red-Breasted<\/a>
Red-Breasted Geese<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Birch<\/a>
“Birches in wonderfully fresh green leaf”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday, round at Wraysbury Lakes, the same set of three warblers sang, but more elusively. The most delightful surprise was a Treecreeper, not only creeping up the willow branches, but singing its sweetly plaintive little song. This used to be rendered, rather tweely, as “Tree, tree, tree, once more I come to thee”, which does capture the length and rhythm of the song. It is not unlike the Chaffinch’s song, if you know that, but without the twiddly “tissy-cheeooo” ending, and not so firm and harsh. One of the Blackcaps, in the thorn-scrub area, had a fine mimetic song. Out on Horse Hill, the first two Swallows of the year flitted overhead, a solitary Kestrel beat its way against the wind, and half a dozen Jackdaws played and chased in the air, for all the world like a gang of naughty schoolboys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring is full of surprises, and this Heron, nesting not in a colony up in the trees, but all alone in an abandoned Swan’s nest in a reedbed, is certainly one of them. The London Wetland Centre this morning also boasted a mass of Blackcaps in the “Wildside” woodland, with at least three males and … Continue reading Spring Surprises: Treecreeper, First Swallows, Ground-Nesting Heron<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[20,47,59,66,156,705,422,160,189,52],"class_list":["post-4424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-history","tag-blackcap","tag-cettis-warbler","tag-chiffchaff","tag-heron","tag-jackdaw","tag-kestrel","tag-london-wetland-centre","tag-swallow","tag-treecreeper","tag-wraysbury-lakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4424"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4433,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4424\/revisions\/4433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}