Country diary: willow warblers soundtrack a stoat sighting

Romaldkirk, Teesdale: Lithe and lethal, the stoat emerged into a patch of bare ground, sniffed the air, then vanished into a dense patch of wild garlic

The warm weather arrived, and with it willow warblers. Soon their song would merge into the background sounds of summer but this was the first of the year, so we stopped to listen.

The warbler was delivering its liquid cadences, exultant, then dying away to a subdued ending, from a hawthorn on the embankment of the disused railway line that now forms part of the Tees Railway Path. Its perch, just a bare twig a week ago, was rapidly coming into leaf. The ground at the bottom of the slope was clothed in lush new growth of meadowsweet, nettles, thistles and ground elder foliage, a knee-high mosaic of leaf shapes.