'Mock Nightingale'

Great Cressingham (Priory Road/Peddars Way/Watton Road) 0800-1015
A real flavour of late spring seen today with sunny, warm conditions from the outset, although as late afternoon approached there was total cloud cover with an oppressive feel to the conditions.

Blackcap or 'Mock Nightingale' Great Cressingham 16/05/14

Common summer visitors are now well established on their chosen territories and as expected my walk this morning produced several singing Whitethroats all along the route, several Blackcaps, and a Garden Warbler heard from the Peddars Way.
The Quail which I found here back in April has not been heard for some time, therefore indicating this was a passage bird.
Blackcaps are common summer visitors, generally arriving in late March, numbers quickly build throughout April and May by which time they have clearly established themselves as one of our commonest visitors.
Blackcaps are very fine songsters, their cheerful fluty warble fills our woodlands and hedgerows and has earned them the colloquial names of 'Mock Nightingale' and 'Poor Mans Nightingale'.
The Blackcap pictured here was singing in an Oak with a hedgerow understorey, a typical breeding habitat for this species.
A stroll around the churchyard at Great Cressingham produced Robin and Wren food carrying for their young, a singing Mistle Thrush on top of the church tower, and that quintessentially sight and sound of a warm spring day....screaming Swifts around the church.