Summer visitors head south...as the first Chiffchaff arrives! September 13th 2009

Sunday morning, and it's all change down in the valley below Lanjaron. The weather reports are promising storms and with the month already well under way I made the decision to "get back to basics" and have a good look at exactly what's moved on and what's arrived on the doorstep as the autumn migration gathers pace.

Perhaps the most obvious departure are the Golden Orioles. I'm fairly certain that I haven't seen a single one for maybe three weeks now. Up on the hillside above the village I'm sure Kiersten said she's still hearing the odd call but down here that familiar screeching and those amazing tropical cries have completely disappeared. I looked up at the cliff-face of the ridge and our swirling flock of Alpine Swifts looks to have headed south as well...in fact, it suddenly dawned on me I could'nt see a single hirundine either anywhere. The skies were strangely quiet and very empty!

However, it's not all bad news. I could hear a hard "tack...tack" call and a brilliant, fluid warbling coming from a lemon tree right in front of me and I quickly found a male Blackcap, singing it's heart out as if it was spring. More scolding "chack,chack,chack" calls and a Sardinian Warbler darted briefly from cover, only as ever to disappear into hiding again as quickly as it had appeared. 

Great Tits, Chaffinch, Goldfinch and Serin continue to add movement and colour as they have all year, and it was nice to see a Spotted Flycatcher still on the alert for passing insects and apparently content to stay on for just a little while longer.

A flash of bright yellow and slate grey next as a pristine Grey Wagtail passed through...with the river habitat down below us in the valley these long-tailed, graceful birds are a welcome occasional surprise and a long-standing personal favourite. I don't ever seem to tire of seeing them.

For just the last couple of days I've been hearing new calls from the citrus trees and olive grove nearby. Well known to me from back home, the "hoo-eet" call of the Phylloscopus genus of warblers is brand new to me here and this morning I decided that today was the day for getting a good look at the mysterious new arrival. I have to say I was preparing myself for disappointment even as I sat down to wait. With one species wintering and possibly resident in our region, and another two or three very similar species now coming through on passage, my worst fear was a fleeting glimpse. To know for sure that I'd seen one of them...but WHICH one? What I needed was time to work it out with good decent views. 

I couldn't really believe it but almost immediately I had this brand new bird in the binoculars, only a few yards away. The line through the eye was just too strong for a Bonelli's Warbler, and even outside the breeding season the chest just wasn't yellow enough for a Wood Warbler. That left two species left to choose from, and they're the most difficult to split in the field...Willow Warbler or Chiffchaff? Back home, they're considered practically identical but at least during the breeding season you've got two very different songs to clinch it.

The artwork in my favourite field guide shows the finest traces of stripes on the "pale buff" upper chest of the Chiffchaff, compared to the uniform "pale yellow" of the Willow Warbler, but these and other minor differences are marginal at best. Without being able to see the colour of the bird's legs, which are often much darker in the Chiffchaff, this was pretty much all I had to go on today. I sat and watched a couple of these beautiful little birds flitting busily between the leaves of the orange bushes for over an hour, before finally deciding that I'd seen my very first Chiffchaff in Spain. 

With the other closely related species on the way to Africa the Chiffchaff actually winters in southern Spain, and in places stays all year round as it does in the north of the country. Hopefully time will tell and we'll be seeing them in December! Needless to say, we'll keep you posted on all the new developments over the coming days and weeks...