During the Summer of this year (2025), I spent many happy days in the Glen River Park listening to the birds singing. Whether it was the jovial baritone of the wood pigeon, the achingly beautiful tones of a blackbird, or the relentless, breathless clicking of the stonechat, all of these sounds brought me great joy, and I admit to missing the choir of birds of different species I would hear pretty much every day. But I must learn to appreciate it when Summer comes around again. At the time, I’d focus too much on the fact that if I was hoping to record, for example, a chaffinch, a wood pigeon or a wren might start singing at the same time. But I wanted to record the chaffinch on their own, why couldn’t the other birds wait their turn! But now that many, but not all of these birds, have stopped singing for the Winter, I miss the days of hearing them all singing together. An orchestra in the trees.
But, on the last few days of May, it seemed there was a new bird in town, with a great, and frankly, justified, confidence in his own ability. It’s like, he’d hear the joyful tones of the robin or the repetitive, hypnotic sounds of the chiffchaff, and he’d say, “That’s very nice and all, but listen to what I can do!”:
https://xeno-canto.org/1002890
The Glen River Park has two duck ponds, though really they are just parts of the river where it widens a bit, so they are often populated by mallards, black headed gulls, a heron, and in the Winter, teals. It was near the smaller of the duck ponds that I first encountered the sedge warbler that would be a resident of the Glen River Park for at least a month. And my goodness, was I ever impressed!
This recording was my first encounter with the Glen River Park sedge warbler, and here the bird is competing with a wood pigeon, a wren, a blackbird, and a chiffchaff, but the sedge warbler is the bird making the very rapid, highly percussive sound. Here’s another shorter recording of the sedge warbler in isolation.
https://xeno-canto.org/1016490
What luck I felt that I was treated to this fantastic performance for a month! With my handy Tascam I was able to get more that 30 recordings of this singer.
And when I say it was an epic performance, the best way I can describe it is that my brain was telling me it was time to start clapping, as you would after a really good performance from a human performer. Basic logic stopped me each time before I actually clapped, not only would a sedge warbler not understand the social significance of clapping, but it’s entirely possible that the loud sound of my clapping would frighten the poor bird away. But the sedge warbler’s performance was so magnificent that I just FELT I should clap, before basic common sense got in the way.
This wasn’t my first encounter with a sedge warbler, that was at Clogheenmilcon Sanctuary Walkway, where I recorded but didn’t see one:
https://xeno-canto.org/1000377
You’ll also hear the sound of a chaffinch. And, also, you’ll hear the sound of cars rushing past. This is what I call Horatio’s Law. Who is Horatio? Some guy I made up. And what is Horatio’s Law?
“Any area that is a good place for encountering birds is invariably in close proximity to a main road that carries a very high volume of traffic.”
So through the ancient wisdom of Horatio we understand that, if there’s a sedge warbler, a chaffinch, or a blackbird about, there’s a road carrying cars, buses and lorries only a few meters away. What a world!
And yes, the Glen River Park is near a busy road, but fortunately, near the center you can find quietish parts where you can often get some decent recordings of birds.
Ever the competitor, the sedge warbler isn’t content with just trying to have a more complex song than the other birds, but is determined to put on the most impressive visual display. That’s why this sedge warbler, would mid song, leap into the air and fly a meter or two away, and come back and land again, all without missing a note in his song! And to think I got to see this fantastic performance for free, while you have to pay top dollar to see, eh, Chris de Burgh or whoever the young kids are listening to these days.
But, have a listen to this!:
https://xeno-canto.org/1008600
After you’ve fully recovered from having your ears sent to the seventeenth dimension, you’ll realize that this recording contains part of the secret of how sedge warblers are such amazing singers. That is, they’re not afraid to take influence from the best singers out there, and that’s why on this recording you’ll hear the sedge warbler imitating a blue tit!
Same on this recording:
https://xeno-canto.org/1010056
It’s important to note that my ability to identify mimicry in birds when I hear it is still quite limited, so blue tit mimicry is the only type of imitation I’ve managed to pick up on in the sedge warbler’s song, but it’s entirely possible that the sedge warbler actually imitated a lot more birds than that in these recordings. Here’s a video of a sedge warbler imitating six different birds!:
The sedge warbler has a fantastically complicated and intricate song. So what motivates the sedge warbler to spent so much time working on having an impressive sound? Well, the oldest reason in the world. No, not money, love! You see, female sedge warblers are fans of the more complex music, a simple 3 chord song won’t impress them, they’re more about the prog rock and the jazz fusion. Play them “Wonderwall” and they won’t be impressed, but play them “The Black Page” by Zappa and they might show some interest!
That’s why a sedge warbler never sings the same song twice. The more phrases his song has, the more female attention he’ll get!:
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/tits-crests-and-warblers/sedge-warbler
I’ve wrote before in this blogpost about how amazing and wonderful it is that non-human minds that are diverged from humans by about 300 million years have music:
How different is a sedge warbler from a human? They literally have more in common with a dinosaur, because, they’re dinosaurs!:
https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/natural-sciences/animals/birds/birds-dinosaurs/
Birds have more in common with snakes than they have with you or me, and yet, me, you and sedge warblers, are all capable of making music.
There are many things that drew me to birds as my main interest when it comes to wildlife. The fact that they can fly is part of it, and the fact that they are dinosaurs is a part of it too, but another big part is, they are so different from us, and yet, so tantalizingly similar.
Are there any similarities in experience between a human who is impressed by a male sedge warbler’s song, and a female sedge warbler who is so impressed she chooses him as a mate? It’s very difficult to know for sure. On the one hand, humans tend to grow tired of music that is too simple, hence why music needs more than one chord most of the time, so you could say much like the female sedge warbler we want a bit more complexity in our music.
But on the other hand, when we hear the song of a robin, we are experiencing something different from another robin who is also listening. To us, a robin’s song is such a beautiful and life affirming sound, that makes us go from a glum mood to a joyous one very quickly. But, it’s important to remember that while male robins do sing for reasons of courtship, males also sing to defend their territory, and female robins sing exclusively for that reason. So when your heart soars when you hear a robin’s song, there is a good chance that you are, for want of a better way of putting it, hearing it wrong. If a human wanted to send you the same message that a robin is sending to other robins, they would probably use the Great Highland Bagpipes accompanied by war drums to send their message. So, when you hear the sweet, soothing sound of a robin, what the bird is actually saying is “This is my land, get out of here, now, or there’ll be trouble!”
Imagine if we one day learned that what humans experience, and what birds experience, when they hear music, and when they make music, has a strong degree of similarity to it. To think that maybe, despite us having nothing in common by a lot of metrics, we might have a bit in common in terms of what sounds we find pleasing. It is very tantalizing.
So, what became of the Glen River Park sedge warbler? I didn’t encounter him any more after the month of June. But it’s important to note, I don’t think there’s any way to definitively prove that it was a different bird several times, after all, it’s not like I can tell one male sedge warbler apart from another! But, as to what happened, if I can even assume it was the same one each time, I’ll never know for sure. The world’s a cruel place for birds, so one sad possibility is that he died, perhaps taken by a sparrowhawk driven by the same urge to live another day as the sedge warbler. I actually remember encountering a family of mute swans consisting of five cygnets, and the next time I saw the family, seeing that there were only four. This was my first experience since I got into birding where I was able to definitively say that a bird I had encountered previously had since died, it was the most plausible explanation for the absent cygnet. It was very sad, but it won’t be the last time such a thing happens in the world of wildlife.
Or perhaps our sedge warbler had a much happier outcome. Perhaps he found the girl of his dreams, and they raised a family of little sedges together! The world is often a harsh place for birds, let’s hope this little guy got a little bit of happiness!
Ponderings Of An Autist 