With hindsight, the late June heatwave was not the ideal time for my (very) old schoolmates and me to be cycling around Suffolk. Yet, despite the searing heat and the lateness of the season, the woods and hedgerows were still awash with birdsong.
Chirping chiffchaffs, melodic blackcaps and warbling whitethroats were everywhere, while swallows twittered over fields and swifts screamed past rooftops in the towns and villages we rode through. I even saw a cuckoo – which I momentarily mistook for a sparrowhawk – flying fast and low across the road.
But the biggest surprise was the number of yellowhammers we heard, each delivering their characteristic song: a rapid warble followed by a final flourish, often rendered as “a-little-bit-of-bread-and-no cheeeese”.
The name yellowhammer is a puzzling linguistic quirk, which might suggest that the bird’s song is peculiarly percussive. The name actually derives, via Anglo-Saxon, from the German word “ammer” – and simply means bunting. Another now obsolete name, yoldring, almost certainly explains the reference to five gold rings in the famous Christmas carol, while scribble lark refers to the pencil-like markings on the bird’s eggs.
Where I live in Somerset, despite the farmed landscape being similar to Suffolk, yellowhammers are very few and far between. Indeed, I’d come to believe that this colourful little bunting had disappeared from most of lowland England. But as I toiled up the rolling hills, cheered on by a chorus of birdsong, I was delighted to be proved wrong.
