Country diary: the wintering birds are on their way north

Pulborough Brooks, West Sussex: Thousands of ducks have already left, and the waders are putting on their breeding colours

More chiffchaffs have begun to arrive in the past few days, and they move through the trees that line the footpaths, singing, feeding, then singing again. A rain shower falls, but soon passes. The Brooks seem comparatively deserted now. The thousands of ducks that wintered here are gone, leaving some teals, shelducks, gadwalls, mallards and Canada and greylag geese. Four black-tailed godwits - medium-sized waders, with tall legs and long, straight beaks - wander along a water channel, dipping their beaks into the water to probe the mud below. All of them are beginning to show breeding colours - warm russet-orange necks and breasts. They will soon be on their way north, too. Some of the godwits that winter here were ringed in Iceland, where many of them breed.

A male blackcap flies up, out of a bramble bush just in front of me, with a pillow of wool-like down in its beak for a nest. It perches and sings, somehow still holding on to its precious cargo. The song is stuttering and scratchy, and short, but ends with a phrase of more tuneful notes. It sounds as though the bird is still practising. He slinks into the bushes and sings again.