Several Reed Warblers were frequenting its favoured area and were singing rather weakly ... then after three quarters of an hour the guttural sounds of its song came from the reeds ... the North hide is situated high on the bank above the lake and so looks down on the reedbed but the bird was perched low in the reeds and initially gave brief partial views ... then it came up the stems to give reasonable views as it continued singing from the middle of a patch of swaying reeds ...
... the Reed Warblers had looked very small from this distance so when the Great Reed Warbler appeared the scale of the bird was obvious ...
... it never came into a truly prominent position but with the elevation of the hide all of the assembled throng eventually located the bird and had good enough views ...
... then after a quarter of an hour's concerted singing the bird flew back to its other patch of reeds ...
Great Reed Warbler breeds across a wide swathe of Eurasia ... British records have numbered between five and ten birds in most years over the past decade although prior to 1958 there were no more than a dozen or so records in total ... rather fittingly this bird was in the same county that the first English record came from in 1847 ... and happily the present bird was watched by many people rather than suffering the fate of death as did the earlier bird ...
It was good to revisit the reserve after my last visit around twenty years ago ... some new boardwalk passed through another reedbed that was rich with Reed Warbler song ... one worked its way obligingly along the edge of the reeds to give some lovely views ...
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