The Invisible Bird

To Leighton Moss this morning. There were signs of Spring everywhere. As well as the obvious example added as an extra, they included:
* seeing a large flock of sand martins hawking insects high above the largest mere
* hearing a reed warbler for the first time this year
* the bitterns still “ booming”. I talked to a chap attaching what I thought was a camera trap to a tree, but I was wrong. It was a sound recording device. He was putting them up in locations across the reserve, using GPS and triangulating they can then work out where the seven males currently “booming” are exactly.

I have heard Cetti’s warblers thousands of times but never actually seen one until today. They are one of the skulkiest of birds, seemingly invisible, an invisibility exacerbated by their short but explosively loud song. And today I saw three, briefly in each case, and I even managed to photograph the third one. This is the result. OK, the camera has focussed on the reeds, and it’s totally out of focus on the bird in the middle of the shot, but it’s there. It really is.