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Common Grasshopper Warbler

Common Grasshopper Warbler

Locustella naevia

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The Common Grasshopper Warbler is a small, secretive, streaky brown warbler that breeds across temperate Europe and the western Palearctic and winters in the Sahel and locally in South Asia. It creeps through dense grass and scrub and is far more often heard than seen, thanks to its long, insect-like reeling song, delivered especially at dawn, dusk and at night.

Did you know?

  • Its reeling song can carry up to about a kilometre on a still night.
  • The genus name Locustella is a diminutive of Latin locusta, “grasshopper”.

Voice

Song

About the species

Identification

A smallish, brownish, heavily streaked bird with short, rounded wings and greyish-pale underparts. It is extremely secretive; when disturbed it runs along the ground and flies low for short distances. It is easiest to identify by its monotonous, mechanical, grasshopper-like reeling song, often heard at dusk and at night. Told from Savi's and River Warblers by its streaked upperparts.

Family

Locustellidae

Size

Small (sparrow)

Colours

brown, white, grey

About the habitat

Dense, low vegetation in damp places – wet meadows, fens, marshy ditches, reed and sedge fringes, young clear-cuts with tall grass and scrub, and tangled thickets.

Diet

Mainly small insects such as beetles, flies, moths and caterpillars, and spiders, picked from leaves and stems near the ground.

Behaviour

Very skulking, it slips through thick cover like a mouse, often with its tail slightly cocked, and runs rather than flies when disturbed. Males sing a sustained, high-pitched, ventriloquial reel from concealed or slightly raised perches, turning the head so that the sound seems to come from all directions. It has been known to feign injury to distract predators.

Sources

Photo: Stefan Hage, Birds.se, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grashoppsangare-070512.jpg

Sound: Max Karlsson, XC655261, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/655261

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_grasshopper_warbler

See also