Return of the Blackcaps

Blackcaps return to England in April. While Cuckoos and Chiffchaffs, also early returning migrants, broadcast their arrival with their monotonous two-note tunes the Blackcap lets loose a rich, full-throated, joyous warble; a defiant announcement that lets everyone know they've cheated death for another winter.

Click here to hear the Blackcap's warble.

This colourful song comes from a colourless little warbler, yet there’s something stylish and continental about the Blackcap’s appearance. Their two-tone grey suit and black beret pulled over dark eyes make them look like some Parisian beatnik. I half expect to catch him sat in the garden’s willow tree smoking Gauloises and muttering about Sartre.

The female Blackcap’s beret is a rich chestnut brown; hardly qualifying her to use the name Blackcap at all.

The Blackcaps will be here all summer then as daylight, temperature and insect food dwindles. Blackcaps, whitethroats, Chiffchaffs, Reed, Sedge and Willow Warblers all evacuate this country. England is no place for a warbler in winter. Each autumn their fragile, feathered bodies fly to Spain and deeper into sub-Saharan Africa on the promise of warmth, food and, ultimately, life.

So, finding a Blackcap swinging on your birdfeeder in December will be as unlikely as seeing Santa at a midsummer barbeque. But at Christmas, miracles can happen.

The laws of nature clearly state that all European Blackcaps must migrate south for the winter. But in the sixties, a small gang of nonconformist Blackcaps in Germany started a revolution. They headed west instead of south, ending up in England. Mother Nature is not kind to those who disobey her rules and this suicide squad was surely sentenced to a frozen death in our frosty winter. But instead they found a new England. A land of mild winters, ornamental berry bushes and strange people who hung balls of fat in their gardens. They didn’t freeze and starve. They survived.

Not only that; the following spring’s short flight home to Germany meant they arrived ahead of their law-abiding neighbours who were still struggling back from their long-haul holiday in Africa. The returning rebels were therefore able to claim the best territories and produce larger families. They raised more revolutionaries who returned to England each winter. Now a small population of Blackcaps makes England’s gardens their winter home; exotic apparitions of summer amongst the Robins and the frost. They’ll have flown back to Germany by the time 'our' British Blackcaps return from Africa, exhausted and oblivious, in April to serenade me on my sun lounger.