I’ve long struggled with soft, high-pitched bird calls. I’ve never been able to pick out the contact calls of redwings migrating after dark, despite a astonished birder friend insisting “You must have heard that! – they’re all over the place.”
And, sadly, the song of the grasshopper warbler, which reminds me of a fishing reel unreeling, is something I haven’t heard for over 25 years, although it’s possible that’s simply because they haven’t returned to the bushes and brambles by the river in my local patch.
So my latest NHS state-of-the-art hearing aids have been an eye-opener – or should that be ear-opener – for me. On a normally quiet stretch of tree-lined towpath in a cutting by the canal we’ve now got chiff-chaffs in stereo, just in from Spain, Portugal and North Africa, proclaiming their territories.
Equally strident, the ‘tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher’ of the great tit. Less strident, but loud and cheerful, the chaffinch hurries through an emphatically chirpy song.