Grasshopper warbler

Locustella naevia

Grasshopper warbler

Grasshopper warblers have a monotonous song which not surprisingly sounds like a grasshopper. Thus it was that a few years ago I detected the presence of a grasshopper warbler in the north west corner of Dùn Coillich. It/they has/have returned but perhaps not every year.

They are skulking birds given to lurking in long grass or bushes and so you are much more likely to hear them than see them. Like other warblers they are insect feeders.

Grasshopper warblers are migrants from West Africa but numbers in Scotland may be increased in autumn as birds from further north stop off en route to their wintering grounds,