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Updated: June 25, 2025
The redstart yonder has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air These descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a greater distance.
"He almost always has company when he passes through here. Some of those Sparrows are so much alike that it is hard for me to tell them apart, but I can always tell Whitethroat because he is one of the largest of the tribe and has such a lovely white throat. He really is handsome with his black and white cap and that bright yellow spot before each eye.
Professor Ansted includes the bird in his list, and restricts it to Guernsey, but I see no reason why it should not occur equally in Sark and Herm. There is no specimen at present in the Museum. LESSER WHITETHROAT. Sylvia curruca, Linnaeus. French, "Bee-fin babillard." Like the Whitethroat, the Lesser Whitethroat is a regular, but by no means a numerous summer visitant to Guernsey.
The Welsh call him master of the coppice, and he welcomes a storm with such a vigorous and hearty song that in some countries he is known as storm-cock. He sometimes kills the young of other birds and eats eggs, a very unthrushlike trait. The whitethroat sings with crest erect, and attitudes of warning and defiance. The hooper is a great bully; so is the greenfinch.
But it is not only a delight to me to listen to the lark singing at heaven's gate and to the vesper nightingale in the oak copse the singer of a golden throat and wondrous artistry; I also love the smaller vocalists the modest shufewing and the lesser whitethroat and the yellowhammer with his simple chant.
I see it in the yellows of hawkweed, rock-rose, and birds'-foot-trefoil, in the innumerable specks of brilliant colour blue and white and rose of milk-wort and squinancy-wort, and in the large flowers of the dwarf thistle, glowing purple in its green setting; and I hear it in every bird-sound, in the trivial songs of yellow-hammer and corn-bunting, and of dunnock and wren and whitethroat.
The Whitethroat is by no means so common in the Channel Islands as it is in England, and though a regular summer visitant it only makes its appearance in small numbers. A few, however, may be seen about the fields and hedgerows in the more cultivated parts of the country.
French, "Fauvette grise," "Bec-fin Grisette." The Whitethroat has hitherto perhaps been better known by the name used in the former edition of 'Yarrell' and by Messrs. Degland and Gerbe, Curruca cinerea, but in consequence of the inexorable rule of the British Association the name "rufa," given by Boddaert in 1783, has now been accepted for this bird.
If the whitethroat eggs were taken from the nest and placed among particoloured pebbles such as are common on some shores, it would need care to distinguish them. If the dotterel's eggs were put down among grass, or even among the clods of ploughed land, they would be equally difficult to find.
He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they cannot remain apart.
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