Birdpass
English
River Warbler

River Warbler

Locustella fluviatilis

Identify the River Warbler by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

The River Warbler is a secretive warbler of dense, damp vegetation in central and eastern Europe that winters in south-eastern Africa. It keeps low in cover and is usually detected by its song, a long, mechanical, insect-like rhythmic reel, often delivered at dusk and at night.

Did you know?

  • Its song can continue for minutes like a running sewing machine, making the bird hard to pinpoint.
  • The genus name Locustella means “little grasshopper”.

Voice

Song

About the species

Identification

An evenly brownish-grey to olive-brown warbler above, greyish-white below, with diffuse dark streaking on the throat and upper breast and long, pale-tipped undertail coverts. It is most reliably separated from Common Grasshopper Warbler by song: in the River Warbler's rhythmic song the individual strokes are clearly audible, whereas the Grasshopper Warbler's song is a more continuous reeling. It lacks the streaked upperparts of Grasshopper Warbler.

Family

Locustellidae

Size

Small (sparrow)

Colours

brown, grey, white

About the habitat

Dense, damp vegetation near water – riversides, wet meadows, willow and alder thickets, reed margins, ditches and tall nettle beds; also overgrown clearings with lush ground cover.

Diet

Mainly small insects and other invertebrates such as beetles, flies, caterpillars, spiders and snails, gleaned from low vegetation and the ground.

Behaviour

A skulker that creeps mouse-like through dense, low cover and is difficult to see except when singing. Males sing a prolonged, sewing-machine-like song from concealed perches, often for long periods at dusk and at night. It nests on or near the ground in tussocks. A long-distance migrant.

Sources

Photo: Lasse Olsson, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flodsangare.jpg

Sound: tsilianidis saky, XC727451, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/727451

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

See also