Country diary: rare encounter with a Dartford warbler

Sinah Common, Hayling Island, Hampshire: Despite years of dedicated gorse-scanning this was the first time I’d seen one of these secretive little birds on my patchThe gorse thicket was ablaze with flower, but the heady coconut-suncream scent of the golden blossom was at odds with the biting wind and overcast sky. As a shower began to fall like a haze of iron filings, I decided to take shelter behind one of the well-preserved anti-aircraft gun emplacements – a relic from the second wo