An unmistakable sound, echoing around the canopy of a wooded combe in Somerset’s Quantock Hills. A series of repeated, one-note calls, followed by a rapid trill often likened to a spinning coin, reveals the presence of a male wood warbler. I peer upwards, scanning the pale green foliage for a pale green bird; and finally catch sight of him, as he searches for tiny insects among the leaves.
The wood warbler is, along with the pied flycatcher and redstart, one of the “western oakwood trio”: charismatic little birds that spend the winter in sub-Saharan Africa, before travelling north to breed in “Britain’s rainforests”.
