Blyth's Reed Warbler sings its heart out at Longlands Lake ... Mediterranean Gulls gather up the coast ...

The Blyth's Reed Warbler in West Cumbria showed remarkably well today for its fourth day ... singing from a patch of scrub and demonstrating its remarkably varied repertoire ...

... showing first of all the dark legs and supercilium that extends just beyond the eye ... the greyish brown tones ...

... then the short primary projection when viewed from behind ...

... a classic bird whose features showed so well thanks to its extrovert behaviour ...

... the sonograms of the song show the dramatic and characteristic phrases with those typical ascending and descending scales ... the characteristic clicks in between ...

Meanwhile in the Workington area Mediterranean Gulls were there on the beach in numbers unusual for so early in the 'autumn' ...

... flighty and unapproachable there were four first summer birds, seven second summer birds and five adults in this the largest group of sixteen ...

... how many will there be in late August when the the maximum numbers usually occur ...

Beautiful Geltsdale ... Tree Pipits delight with their magical display flight ...

This time my focus is on the actual valley of the River Gelt rather than the wider RSPB Geltsdale which takes in the Black Burn and the Pennine slopes overlooking the Tyne Gap ... true borderland country this wider area sees the Gelt before it drains into the Irthing and then into the Eden as it heads to the Solway ... not far away the Black Burn arises on the eastern slope of Cold Fell and finds its way into the North Sea ...

For me Tree Pipit has a special place among the summer migrants ... rather like the special quality that Wood Warbler has among the phylloscopus warblers ... from the rather muted and curtailed song that comes from the bird as it perches in the top of a hawthorn ... then the vertical take-off and parachute descent with those strong drawn out notes ... pure magic ...

The Gelt valley has gentler feel than some parts of the reserve and it is here that Tree Pipits have their stronghold within the reserve ... in Cumbria we are fortunate to have good populations ... in much of England this is a very scarce species ...

... and a declining one with a 46% decline in the 1995 - 2010 period ... this is thought to be related to problems either during migration or in their winter grounds in West Africa ...

Even within Cumbria some areas have seen steep declines in recent decades; the Eden Valley and West Cumbrian plain have suffered particularly ...

Within the county the abundance map shows the picture as it emerged from the 2007 - 2012 Atlas ...

Despite current concerns about population declines it seems from reading MacPherson ( 1892 Fauna of Lakeland ) that this species was rather thinly distributed even at that time ... he would of course be judging the abundance of wildlife by different standards from those we experience today ...

As I watched one bird performing both its sedentary song and its display flight, it returned time and again to the same hawthorn ...

... the complexity of the song is only appreciated by looking at the sonogram ...

... that initial muted jumble of notes that leads into the hauntingly beautiful drawn out notes that include both ascending and descending elements before finishing with another quieter jumble of sounds ...