Skirr Cottage Diary: Yellow Browed Warbler.

Sunday morning and a beautiful sunny day. Suddenly a fall of small birds descend into the shrubs and the bamboo. The bird table and the bird bath become a focus of attention with up to five coal tits, a pair of nuthatch, wrens, dunnocks, house sparrows, robins, black birds; great and blue tits everywhere. Then a willow warbler showed itself: but even better, the star of this impromptu show, a yellow browed warbler appeared on top of a section of bamboo. This was a first for me in Derbyshire, let alone my garden. This small green leaf warbler came so close to the bedroom window binoculars were not even needed. The bird showed well in the sunlight, not much larger than a goldcrest, sporting a fine yellowish eyebrow stripe and prominent double wing bars. Eventually the bird left the bamboo and perched on the corner of the sun house roof right beneath our viewing window. After about two minutes the little migrant joined the rest of the flock and disappeared into the leafy shrubs. It was good to note the difference between this little rarity and the willow warbler, which actually appeared to be a lot shyer, showing briefly then diving into the cover of the shrubs. The small flock of mixed birds stayed for about half and hour, then disappeared as quickly as they had arrived, leaving our local sparrows and chaffinch feed without competition.