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Bird Sightings : Hebrides : Chiffchaff
Chiffchaff
Phylloscopus collybita
Gaelic: Caifean
Photography © Kim Park
Gisla - Uig - Isle of Lewis - Outer Hebrides (Western Isles)
21st April, 2006
Chiffchaff
- WI Rare migrant breeder, (approx 3 singing records annually? - Stornoway). Passage visitor
- Listen to a chiffchaff (RSPB site)
At 10 - 11cm, the chiffchaff is a tiny warbler about the size of a wren.
It has been described as elusive, active, confident (and exasperating!) in nature.
With olive-brown upperparts the chiffchaff is very similar to a willow warbler, but is visually distinguished from it by having having very dark, blackish legs.
A chiffchaff has a pale-yellow eye-stripe, which has a dark smudge going through it.
The underparts of the chiffchaff are whitish, pale-buff, tending toward yellowish-buff in autumn (especially in the immature bird). In autumn the chiffchaff's plumage becomes generally brighter.
A chiffchaff has brown wings which have no wingbars, and it has a brown tail.
The chiffchaff has the pointed beak of an insect-eater. It favours mature woodland with well developed undergrowth, where it darts about picking insects from trees, and also catching them in flight. It can briefly hover. Fruit, and occasionally nectar are also part of the chiffchaff's autumn and winter diet.
Between 700,000 and 800,000 pairs breed in the UK in summer, nesting either on the ground or in the branches of bushes, laying 4 - 9 eggs, which are white with dark-speckles.
The chiffchaff is a scarce bird in the Western Isles, it is most often seen on its migration journey during October, and November, ( a few in the spring). Generally less than 50 records a year, with a just a couple of probable breeding pairs.
Most of the UK breeding birds migrate to the Eastern Mediterranean, India and South of the Sahara in Africa in late August, early September, leaving only 500 to a thousand resident birds to over-winter in the UK.
Distinguished from the willow warbler by having dark legs, and by it's song which instead of being the melodic warble of a willow warbler sounds a bit like "chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff..."
See a photograph of a chiffchaff taken by Grahame Thompson, in the Stornoway Castle Grounds on October 24th, 2006
Visit Kim's web site of her photography of the Western Isles
www.bigbigskies.co.uk
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