The Zitterbug at Walberswick 4th August 2025

A Zitting Cisticola in typical pose that I saw in Morocco in 2013

On Tuesday the 2nd of July a Zitting Cisticola was found on the coast at Foreness Point which is near Margate in Kent.This was only the ninth record of this species in Britain.

Unable to travel on the day I made plans to go and see it the next day, as early as possible.Sadly although it was reported in the early morning on Wednesday, by the time I got there at 10am it had been seen to fly off strongly to the northeast and my journey, anticipating a new British tick was to prove fruitless.

I have been on a bad run lately, having dipped a Savannah Sparrow in Shetland and a Song Sparrow in Yorkshire as well as only hearing an Eastern Bonelli's Warbler in Dungeness and now missing a Zitting Cisticola in Kent.

Such a rare bird was unlikely to provide another opportunity for quite some time or so I thought. However whilst staying with my twitching pal Mark(R) at his house in Yorkshire over the weekend news came through of another Zitting Cisticola being found at Walberswick in Suffolk on Sunday the 3rd of August. 

Could this possibly be the same bird as the one at Foreness Point? This individual was singing and displaying in similar fashion to that one

Mark(R) who had already seen a Zitting Cisticola said I should go immediately but I was on a deadline to meet Mrs U who was returning from a family visit to Glasgow on this day and I was under strict instruction to meet her off the train at 8.30pm in Oxford. If I went for the cisticola immediately as Mark suggested I would have little time to spend looking for the bird before having to leave Walberswick to rendezvous with Mrs U in Oxford.

I told Mark(R) I would go first thing tomorrow, Monday, to try and see it. No matter what.

During Sunday I rang Mark(P) my other birding accomplice who lives but a few miles from me and told him about the cisticola and as further incentive adding the fact a Black Stork was also residing in a dyke just thirty minutes away from the cisticola. Being a novice lister he needed both birds and was naturally keen to go.

Mark(P) has problems sleeping at the moment as do I, so we discussed our departure time on Monday.

Five am OK for you? I ventured

Sure. If I  am awake earlier do you fancy leaving then?

No problem. I'll leave my phone on.Just ping me,

My phone pinged with a text at 3.15am on Monday

Be with you in 30mins.

I was ready and waiting when Mark arrived at my house and we set off in the solid re-assurance of his Landrover Discovery as the sky began to lighten.

Already, even at this early hour there were a surprising number of cars on the rural roads of Oxfordshire and by the time we made the Motorways it was full on traffic, all in a hurry. I shuddered and thanked my lucky stars that now retired such torture was no longer mine to bear

We made a stop for fuel and refreshments in Cambridgeshire and at around 7am wound our way down a narrow rural lane through Walberswick to cross the small River Dunwich via a very narrow bridge and came to a halt in Cliff Field Car Park. This was the designated location on Birdguides map.We paid our parking fee online and headed southwest as instructed by Birdguides, along a path that crossed through a cluster of beachhuts and tents, greeting some bemused campers as we passed, and then snaked through the top of some dunes with the sea on one side and the salt marshes of the nature reserve on the other and through which ran the narrow river.The weather was benign with occasional sun and a light wind and the location quite beautiful and atmospheric.A loneliness of  sea and sky, to paraphrase John Masefield.

The Zitting Cisticola's home

We could see a cluster of birders in the distance and headed for them.On arrival we were informed the cisticola had been seen earlier, both perched and displaying with its zig zagging, undulating flight but  had  now been out of view for some time. Inwardly I groaned as, desperately tired from our early start I was now required to cope with standing for an indeterminate wait whilst my anxiety levels grew exponentially

Not for the first time I wondered if I was getting too old for this twitching malarkey

Who was I kidding? I knew full well that as soon as I clapped my tired eyes on this inoffensive little bird, truly unexceptional in its streaky brown plumage but exceptional in its rarity, all recriminations would be banished.

We stood amongst twenty other birders and waited and waited.

Scanning for the cisticola. Mark(P) in the foreground

Two Spoonbills flew past us towards a small flash of freshwater but no small birds showed themselves in the grass apart from some Reed Buntings, a Sedge Warbler and a Common Whitethroat. I noted that everyone else had a scope.We had been told a scope was un-necessary but it became obvious it was if the cisticola was ever to perch on top of the long grass or reeds which were now its home. Having walked over a kilometre across the sandy dunes we were reluctant to return to the car for the scopes.Why we did not put them on our backs when we first walked out I have no idea but that is what tiredness and four tedious hours in a car can do to you. 

We were stood next to a well spoken gent, dressed in a pair of baggy corduroys, brogues that had seen better days and a rumpled tweed jacket that clearly had seen a lot of action judging by the lining that was parting company from the rest of the jacket. A well used pair of bins, held together with tape hung around his neck. I could only describe him as being a throw back from a previous era, the kind of birder I recall from my long distant childhood and mildly eccentric but he knew his birds and was to prove very helpful.

Various people were constantly looking out across the grass and marshland but no one had seen the bird re-appear. Almost forty five minutes had elapsed when a stirring amongst birders to my right indicated that the bird was visible again but I had no idea where to look other than across the grass and marshland.Of course I saw nothing.

Frustratingly everyone lapsed back into silence  and it was obvious the bird had gone back into the grass.

Mark decided to go back to get his scope from the car, jokingly instructing me to try not to see the bird while he was gone.

Ten minutes after his departure.Well you can guess what happened

A shout came from the well spoken gent to my left

I can hear it! It's flying!

I looked out across the grass, searching for it

You are looking too low he told me

It's in the sky. he added

I raised my bins

No, higher, it's in the grey cloud

I raised my bins even further

Higher, it's now in the blue

Finally there it was, seemingly miles up in the sky. No wonder I had initially failed to locate it. I had never expected it to be so high.  A tiny bird, bouncing as if on elastic up and down in the clear air, calling zit zit zit as it flew. It went left, it went right, then away and then towards us, forever  undulating and zig zagging and a nightmare to follow but I hung on and after about a minute it descended to the ground and disappeared into the grass.

This is what  it would have looked like if we saw it perched.
Image taken by me in Morocco in 2013

What a relief to have at last seen it 

Now I knew where to look for it  I was confident I would be able to find and see it on its next flight

Mark returned

He must have guessed

Don't tell me!

So I did

Don't worry it will be up again I re-assured him

And so it proved and Mark was happy. A lifer for him and another British tick, the first for this year, for me

Looking out from where we stood on the shingle ridge and across the grass there was the narrow River Dunwich and beyond more grassland and then a line of Walberswick's upmarket idiosynchratic houses on the skyline with a Saxon church in their midst.These were to prove the guide points for future flights of the cisticola of which there were half a dozen to come while we were present

Instructions such as:  

It's over the cottage with the pointed thatched roof. 

It's over the church. 

It's over the house with the solar panels. 

All were to prove very useful in locating what was a small, at times dot like, hyperactive bird, in my bins.

Sadly there are no photos as the bird was too distant and too hard  to follow.Needless to say a  scope was irrelevant as the bird was only seen in its erratic zigzag flight which was impossible to follow with a scope..

We never saw it perched but  saw it well enough when performing its display flight and calling on at least half a dozen occasions

Both of us decided to settle for these flight views as the wind was increasing and because of this it was extremely unlikely that the cisticola would be seen perching on the tops of the grass or reeds any time soon

Also known as Streaked Fantailed Warbler a far more satisfactory name in my opinion, its distribution covers southern Europe and North Africa where it inhabits grassland and for the most part is resident slthough it is slowly expanding northwards. Very rare overshoots from its normal range, such as this individual in Suffolk, are a mystery if it is non migratory and its origin can only be guessed at.

.This was species 539 for my British List

Postscript

It would appear that the male we saw was one of a pair of Zitting Cisticolas that have bred here as two adults and three juveniles were seen on 22nd August.This is the first confirmed breeding record of this species in Britain

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