Siberian Chiffchaffs 260209

The loose congregation of half-a-dozen or more Chiffchaffs frequenting the so called PC World drain seemed to exhibit a bewildering array of plumage tones from greens through browns to really quite cold greys. We didn't hear anything other than bursts of typical 'European' Chiffchaff song (which rather alarmingly on one occasion seemed to issue forth from a really quite grey individual - at least one that clearly wasn't a green and yellow bird) during our visit and for the most part hardly any calls were heard; however after some while one individual (the bird in the two photographs below) gave a prolonged burst of calling and we were able to obtain some recordings: click here to listen to one sequence where the calls aren't quite drowned out by the constant din of traffic noise from the busy road beside the drain.

The birds spent a lot of time high up against the light or out of photographic range - and anyway we were more interested in getting some sound recordings - and we didn't get any other even slightly meaningful images of other individuals beyond the three below: