Blackcap

The serenity of the vast green forest would be but a blanket of numbing silence if not for the blessings that these brilliant little birds bestow upon the ears of all who happen to be within this natural world. Their contribution to art and beauty cannot be overlooked, for who knows what wonderful tunes they have inspired over the millennia that man and woman have walked upon this rock. The Blackcap is a common and widespread sylviid warbler which breeds throughout northern and temperate Europe. Like most Sylvia species, it has distinct male and female plumages: The male has the small black cap from which the species gets its name, whereas in the female the cap is light brown. This is a bird of shady woodlands with ground cover for nesting. The nest is built in a low shrub, and 3–6 eggs are laid. The song is a pleasant chattering with some clearer notes like a Blackbird. This full song can be confused with that of the Garden Warbler, but in the Blackcap, it characteristically ends with an emphatic fluting warble. Especially in isolated Blackcap populations (such as in valleys or on peninsulas and small islands), a simplified song can occur. This song is said to have a Leiern-type ("drawling") ending after the term used by German ornithologists who first described it. The introduction is like that in other Blackcaps, but the final warbling part is a simple alteration between two notes, as in a Great Tit's call but more fluting. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=120147