Greater whitethroat

Voice

A short, hurried, scratchy chatter of two to three seconds, as if someone hoarse were rattling something off at speed: cher-cher-witcher-witcher-cher-chewee, rough in tone, with no clear whistles and a small cheerful flourish at the end. It is delivered from a projecting twig on top of a bramble or from a barbed-wire fence, and very often in a song flight: the bird springs up at an angle, hangs a moment on fluttering wings and drops back onto the bush still singing. The call is a hard, short check, and an agitated bird gives a drawn-out, rasping chairrr, like a comb drawn across a fingernail. Song runs from the last days of April into July, is fiercest in the first half of May and loudest in the first hour after sunrise, but continues through the middle of the day and, in warm weather, into the evening.

Identification

Slim and long-tailed, with a striking rusty wing panel: the secondaries and tertials are broadly fringed rufous, and at any distance that warm panel is the first thing you see. The legs are pale — straw, buff or flesh-coloured. The throat is clean white and stands out sharply. The male has an ash-grey head with a narrow white eye-ring and a pink flush on the breast; the female is browner-headed and duller below. The long tail has white outer feathers, easily seen as the bird dives for cover. The crown feathers are often raised, giving a shaggy, angular head.

Confusion species

Lesser Whitethroat is the main confusion species and three features settle it: leg colour (pale straw in Whitethroat, lead-grey to almost black in Lesser), wing (a broad rusty panel in Whitethroat, plain grey-brown with no warm tones in Lesser) and face (Lesser shows a dark ear-covert mask contrasting with a grey crown, Whitethroat does not). The songs separate them instantly too: a scratchy, hurried chatter in Whitethroat, a dry rattle on one pitch in Lesser. Barred Warbler is much bulkier and heavier, with a yellow iris and two white wing bars. In Spain, Subalpine Warbler recalls a small Whitethroat, but has an orange throat and breast and a red eye-ring.

Habitat

Open, rank, thorny country with no tall trees: bramble banks, hawthorn hedges, nettle beds, dykes and verges, young plantations and clear-fells, rank field margins, dune scrub and neglected corners. The nest is placed low in nettles, bramble or a thorn bush. On migration it uses almost any scrub, including dry ramblas and Mediterranean maquis.

Range and movements

Breeds across the whole of Europe and into Siberia and winters in the Sahel, just south of the Sahara. In the Netherlands it is a common breeder of dykes, rough margins and dune scrub; it crashed by three-quarters in a single year after the great Sahel drought of 1968 and 1969 and only recovered in the 1990s, with the trend now slightly positive again. In Spain it breeds locally in the north and centre, in hedgerow country and montane scrub, and large numbers pass through the whole country in August and September.

• Breeding (summer)
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Mid-May, in the first two hours after sunrise, along a dyke or a bramble-rich field edge. Do not look inside the bush but at the topmost twigs: the Whitethroat sings deliberately in the open. Check the legs on every singing bird, because next to a Lesser Whitethroat the difference clicks in one go. The song flight — up at an angle, a moment of quivering, then down again still singing — is a fine sight and betrays birds you would otherwise miss.

Conservation status

Not threatened and with a very large European population, largely recovered from the crash of the late 1960s. Numbers still swing from year to year with rainfall in the Sahel. Over the longer term the clearance of rank vegetation, the flailing of verges and ditch banks during the breeding season, and the loss of hedges and odd corners in farmland are the biggest pressures.