Garden Warbler | Sylvia borin

Voice

Migrants sing regularly in spring: a long, even, warm babble of soft, slightly rolling notes, longer and more uniform than the song of Eurasian Blackcap and lacking its clear, fluty ending. The call is a dry chek-chek and a soft, drawn-out chaaah.

Identification

13–14.5 cm. Compact and round-headed, with a short, blunt bill and a gentle expression. Upperparts plain grey-brown to olive-brown, underparts off-white with a buff wash across breast and flanks. The only real feature is a greyish patch on the side of the neck; otherwise a faint pale eye-ring and a barely visible supercilium. No wing-bar and no white in the tail; legs blue-grey. Sexes alike; juveniles are slightly warmer and fresher in autumn.

Confusion species

Females and juveniles of Eurasian Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) always have a rufous-brown cap. Eastern Olivaceous Warbler (Iduna pallida) and Western Olivaceous Warbler (Iduna opaca) have a flatter head, a longer, pointed bill with a pale lower mandible and a pale supraloral stripe, and move the tail. Young Barred Warblers (Curruca nisoria) are larger and longer-tailed, with pale fringes to the wing-coverts and tertials and dark crescents on the undertail-coverts. Upcher's Warbler (Hippolais languida) is greyer and waves a longer tail.

Habitat

On passage any place with a dense canopy and shrubs: oases and date-palm gardens with an understorey of figs and pomegranates, orchards, parks and gardens, riverine woodland along the Nile and the Euphrates, and in the Maghreb maquis and riparian woodland. In late summer and autumn it eats much fruit, such as figs, mulberries and berries of mastic and elder, to build fat reserves for the desert crossing.

Range and movements

Passage migrant throughout the region. In the Maghreb most numerous in autumn, along Morocco's Atlantic coast, in northern Algeria and Tunisia and in the oases of the Sahara; in spring many cross the desert in a single flight and are scarcer. In the east it passes through Libya, Egypt (Nile Valley and Sinai), Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and in smaller numbers across the Arabian Peninsula, from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to Yemen, Oman and the Gulf states; in spring most numerous along the Levant coast and at Eilat. There are no known breeding records in the region. Beyond it, it breeds from northern Spain and Britain across Europe to western Siberia, Turkey and the Caucasus, and winters in tropical and southern Africa.

• Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
• Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
• Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

In April and May at Eilat, in the gardens of Sharm el-Sheikh or in an oasis on the Moroccan desert edge: look for a quietly moving, plain warbler deep inside a fig tree and listen for the long, babbling song. In September and October berry-bearing shrubs and fig trees in the coastal gardens of the Maghreb are the best places.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened. On migration birds are lost to trapping with nets and limesticks, particularly along Egypt's Mediterranean coast and in parts of the Levant; the loss of gardens and scrub in oases also affects it.

Scientific name

Sylvia borin | (Boddaert, 1783)

Boddaert described the species in 1783 as Motacilla Borin; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sylvia was introduced in 1769 by Scopoli. Sylvia is Modern Latin silvia, a woodland nymph, related to silva 'wood'; the name passed to small songbirds of scrub and undergrowth. borin is a local name for the bird in the Genoa area of Italy, derived from Latin bos 'ox', because the warbler was believed to accompany oxen. The specimen the first description was based on came from France.