Perch to arpeggio – the spring choristers arrive

Airedale, West Yorkshire The chiffchaffs are already here with their chiming two-step jingle, now we wait for the blackcapsIt’s a time of year for waiting and listening. The chiffchaffs are already here; they turned up mid-March, tumbling in off the Africa-Yorkshire flyway and filling the leafless beech tops with their chiming two-step jingle. Now I’m waiting for the blackcaps. The bird writer Edward Grey wrote of being “ears a-tiptoe for the first note of a blackcap” in