There are lots of reasons why Monkwood is so special – it's blend of oak and wet woodlands (still very wet, even in June), the many different butterfly species that are found here and the flowery corridors that border the paths...not to mention the dormice, dragonflies, reptiles, great crested newts and so on! But it’s becoming increasingly important for our migrant birds too. Species like cuckoo, willow warbler and common whitethroat are in sharp decline across the UK but Monkwood still manages to attract a good number each year.

Spring for me is a checklist of hearing each different birdsong for the first time that year. It usually starts early when the first robins change from their slightly subdued, wistful winter song to something more energetic. Hearing a male blackbird in full flow on one of those spring evenings where you start to notice the day length increasing is balm for the soul. After a long winter, this is always the moment that fills me with joy. Then the floodgates open and there’s a flurry of firsts – first chiffchaff, first blackcap and first swallow. If I’m really lucky I might be able to tick off first redstart too, although I have to be in the right place at the right time.

For some time, willow warbler song was the alarm tone on my phone to turf me out of bed in the mornings. Despite that, it remains a favourite of mine and I love hearing their gentle cascading song. The loss of good breeding habitat is one of the major causes of their population decline in the UK as they rely on young woodland of particularly willow, alder and silver birch. The coppice plots and coppiced ride edges at Monkwood mimic these conditions and whilst most of the coppice is hazel, there are thickets of willow and alder that usually hold a singing willow warbler or two.

If willow warblers are melodic and lyrical, common whitethroats are the opposite. Their short, scratchy song is often sung in flight as the males throw themselves into the air from their favourite song post to perform a loop. It’s an easy one to learn, though, because the pattern is always the same and they repeat it over and over so you get a chance to practice. If you’re lucky enough to see him, the male has a beautiful burnt amber eye surrounded by a white ring. They love scrub and so they’re much more likely to be found in the hedgerows at Green Farm rather than Monkwood itself. We hope that the restoration work at Green Farm to encourage more scrub will boost the number of whitethroats on site.

You know spring has sprung when you hear the first cuckoo. They’re so rare nowadays that you can’t quite believe your ears when you hear the first male call after his epic 5,000 mile journey back from Africa. I’m just about old enough to remember hearing distant cuckoos calling on spring mornings from my bed in suburban north Worcestershire. They wouldn’t stick around to breed and were probably just calling as they were making their way north but I knew even then how lucky I was to hear them. That was 30 years ago and how times have changed. Every year, more people ask me where they can go for a guaranteed cuckoo as there are so few around. We have at least two males calling every year at Monkwood and sometimes catch a glimpse of the elusive females too. This year the males have been heard in Little Monkwood, the north end of main Monkwood and right out across the Green Farm landscape, which is really exciting. The adults are probably targeting dunnock nests to lay their own eggs into and as the new land at Green Farm diversifies into more scrub and woodland, the number of dunnocks should increase.  

With our migratory birds facing so many challenges on their travels to and from their breeding grounds, their vital conservation becomes ever more complex. But if we can ensure that they have lots of food and good habitat to breed in once they get back here, we may be able to start reversing some of those declines. Projects like Green Farm, which is increasing Monkwood by a third in size, will really help to do this and I’m looking forward to seeing how populations respond to our restoration.