Garden Warbler - a photo on Flickriver

Garden Warbler

Garden Warbler is not the easiest of birds to photograph as it usually remains deep in cover. I was cycling out from my village recently and I heard the anxious, hurried song of a Garden Warbler. They have a similar song to Blackcap but Garden Warblers usually sing for longer and have fluty notes, unlike the pure notes of Blackcap. Here is a Garden Warbler recorded nearby by my friend David Pennington recently: xeno-canto.org/799354 Garden Warblers usually arrive back from Africa about 10 days later than Blackcaps. The Garden Warbler's distinguishing features are that it has no distinguishing features. It is the colour of milky tea, a little paler on the underparts with no obvious eyestripes, eyebrows, black cap, white throat or wing panels. Also it is usually quite elusive, remaining hidden while it belts out its song. Despite its name it is not usually an inhabitant of gardens, preferring scrubby woodland. The name Garden Warbler was first used by Thomas Bewick in 1832. Prior to that it was known by the regional name Pettychaps, which is apparently imitative of its lively song. Incidentally Lesser Pettychaps was an old name for Chiffchaff. The scientific name Sylvia borin is rather odd. Apparently "Borin" was a local Genoese name for an unknown type of warbler, so named because it associated with cattle (Latin Bos). I cannot think of any warblers that associate with cattle and I certainly don't think Garden Warbler would be the Genoese Borin. Maybe it was Yellow Wagtail as they do associate with cattle? Sylvia is easier to explain as that is a woodland sprite. One final thing; a study of the mitochondrial DNA of the "Sylvia" warblers showed there were two distinct "clades" or groups within that family of birds (Voelker, G. & Light, J. E. 2011, BMC Evolutionary Biology. 11 163). As a result, most of our Sylvia warblers were transferred into the resurrected genus Curruca, leaving only Blackcap and Garden Warbler (plus 5 non-European species) in Sylvia. So in Britain Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat and Dartford Warbler are all in the genus Curruca.

Taken on: May 23, 2023

Tags:

Sylvia

borin

Warbler

West

Yorkshire

Tim Melling « less

Sets appears in: • British Birds

Stats: 4,140 views / 29 comments

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